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The poems in this volume have been selected from 
the books of verse entitled: 

The Testimony of the Suns 
A Wine of Wizardry 
The House of Orchids 
Beyond the Breakers 
The Caged Eagle 
Sails and Mirage 

and from the dramatic poems: 

Lilith 

Rosamund 

Truth 

These volumes are published by A. M. Robertson, 
San Francisco, California. 


SELECTED POEMS 


BY 

GEORGE STERLING 



NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1923 










Copyright, 1923 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

Printed March, 1928 



Printed in 

United States of America 

VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY 
BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK 


MAY -2 *23 


©C1A705241 

\ 


"V* 0 \ 


LAWRENCE LEND A 


















CONTENTS 

Mirage. 

The First Food. 

The Lost Nymphs. 

The Queen Forgets . 

The Master Mariner . 

Autumn. 

The Princess on the Headland . 
The Ashes in the Sea . 

The Voice of the Dove . 

Spring in Carmel. 

Autumn in Carmel . 

Dirge. From Lilith . 

Sanctuary . 

The Rack. 

In the Market Place . 

Willy Pitcher. 

The Hunting of Dian . 

The Last Days. 

Father Coyote . 

The Midges. 

Conspiracy. 


PAGB 

3 

5 

7 

9 

12 

14 

16 

18 

21 

23 

26 

29 

30 

31 

35 

38 

40 

43 

45 

47 

48 





















PAGE 

In Autumn. 51 

Saul.52 

A Lost Garden ......... 55 

The Glass of Time.59 

Sails.62 

The Common Cult.67 

Atthan Dances. From Truth . . . .71 

The Secret Garden.73 

To a Girl Dancing.76 

The Far Feet.82 

Hesperian.84 

The Morning Star.93 

The Evening Star.95 

To the Moon.98 

The Hidden Pool ........ 102 

The Death of Circe.105 

Ballad of Two Seas.107 

The Slaying of the Witch .Ill 

To Twilight.116 

Beyond the Breakers.118 

The Swimmers.124 

Duandon.131 

Three Sonnets of the Night Skies . 

I Aldebaran at Dusk . . . .142 

II Chariots of Dawn.143 

III The Huntress of Stars . . . 144 

Three Sonnets of Oblivion 

I Oblivion.145 

II The Dust Dethroned .... 146 

III The Night of Gods .... 146 























PAGE 

The Skull of Shakespeare.148 

The Setting of Antares.150 

Infidels.151 

“Omnia Exeunt in Mysterium” . . . .152 

Sonnets by the Night Sea.154 

The Black Vulture.159 

In Extremis.160 

A Mood.161 

Ocean Sunsets.162 

The Iris Hills. From Rosamund . . . 165 

Ode on the Centenary of the Birth of 

Robert Browning.166 

The House of Orchids.174 

A Wine of Wizardry.182 

The Testimony of the Suns.192 


















• . 

























' 




























































































i I 







































SELECTED POEMS 





MIRAGE 


I well remember that the year was old— 

A time of fallen leaves and wings departing. 
Beside our western sea the grass was starting, 
And willow buds were eager to unfold. 

But all that day the shadowed paths were wet, 

As tho in cloud had come the waiting vision, 
And on the sunset altars of transition 
Awhile that mournfulness and beauty met. 

Long gone the night that held my deathless 
dream— 

Its vanished rain long given to the roses; 

But tho I sleep, no other night discloses 
The Three who shone by that delaying Stream. 

One was called Evening for her slow caress, 

And one called Peace because her eyes were 
tender, 

(Softly she came, most innocent and slender), 
And one called Heart-ache for her loveliness. 


3 


They were of slumber and mirage’s sky— 
Frailties of vision, an august illusion, 

Living a little by the soul’s inclusion. 

Living in memory as long as I. 

Yet did they make the burning stars seem clods— 
Those shadows of illusion, passing slowly; 

For on each face a Light fell sad and holy 
From tracts I dreamt forbidden save to gods. 

A little while, a little while they gleamed, 

Who were not, are not, yet shall haunt me ever, 
Mingling the sorrow of the Once and Never, 

To glorify the dream of him that dreamed. 

I shall not know them other than they are, 

Who find on paths that memory retraces 
The immortal, mournful beauty of those faces 
That haunting, hold me exile of their star. 


4 


THE FIRST FOOD 


Mother, in some sad evening long ago, 

From your young breast my groping lips were 
taken. 

Their hunger stilled, so soon again to waken, 
But nevermore that holy food to know. 

Ah! nevermore! for all the child might crave! 
Ah! nevermore! through years unkind and 
dreary! 

Often of other fare my lips are weary. 
Unwearied once of what your bosom gave. 

(Poor wordless mouth that could not speak your 
name! 

At what unhappy revels has it eaten 
The viands that no memory can sweeten,— 
The banquet found eternally the same!) 

Then fell a shadow first on you and me. 

And tendrils broke that held us two how dearly! 
Once infinitely yours, then hourly, yearly, 

Less yours, as less the worthy yours to be. 

5 


(O mouth that yet should kiss the mouth of Sin! 
Were lies so sweet, now bitter to remember? 
Slow sinks the flame unfaithful to an ember; 
New beauty fades and passion’s wine is thin.) 

How poor an end of that solicitude 

And all the love I had not from another! 

Peace to your dear, forgiving heart, O Mother, 
Who gave the dear and unremembered food! 


6 


THE LOST NYMPH 


Now whither hast thou flown? 

In what retreat art hid?— 

Where falling waters moan 
In shadow, or amid 
The rushes of the river, pebble-sown? 

’Twas but a breath ago 
I held thy captive hands. 

Clearly thy footprints show 
Along the final sands. 

Almost I hear thy voice, divinely low. 

I do but know thy feet 

Have gone from me—not why. 

I do but know them fleet 
As clouds upon the sky. 

Ah J gone so soon, whom love hath found so sweet 


7 


Thy loveliness made sure 

Thou wouldst be fled ere long. 

No beauty shall endure 
Beyond its shrining song— 

However close, however strange and pure. 

Afar thy pathway leads, 

Yet will I follow fast. 

Hoping, tho day recedes, 

To find thy home at last 
And silver of thee ’mid the golden reeds. 


8 


THE QUEEN FORGETS 


What came before and afterward 
(She said) I do not know; 

But I remember well a night 
In a life long ago. 

What spoil was I of Egypt sacked? 

Of what old war the pledge? 

Around my tent whose army lay, 

At the great desert’s edge? 

A maiden, or a Satrap’s wife, 

A slave or queen was I 

Who saw that night the steady stars 
Go down the living sky? 

And saw against the heavenly ranks 
How one stood watch and ward. 

Black on the stars he stood, and leaned 
On a cross-hilted sword. 


9 


There was no sound in all the camp 
But when a stallion neighed .... 
I saw the light of Sirius 
On the cold blade. 

Downward, above a single palm, 
Slowly the great star crept; 

More motionless my sentry stood, 

As silently I wept. 

What wrath had Libya for my loss? 

In Syria what tears? 

What king or swineherd cursed his god 
In those forgotten years? 

The tale is not in tapestry; 

The grey monks do not know .... 
Only its shadow touches me 
From out the long ago. 


10 


Of terror and of tenderness 
Is that far vigil made, 
And the green light of Sirius 
On the chill ’blade. 


11 


THE MASTER-MARINER 


My grandsire sailed three years from home, 
And slew unmoved the sounding whale: 

Here on a windless beach I roam 
And watch far out the hardy sail. 

The lions of the surf that cry 
Upon this lion-colored shore 

On reefs of midnight met his eye: 

He knew their fangs as I their roar. 

My grandsire sailed uncharted seas, 

And toll of all their leagues he took: 

I scan the shallow bays at ease, 

And tell their colors in a book. 

The anchor-chains his music made 

And wind in shrouds and running-gear: 

The thrush at dawn beguiles my glade. 

And once, ’tis said, I woke to hear. 


12 


My grandsire in his ample fist 

The long harpoon upheld to men: 

Behold obedient to my wrist 

A grey gull’s-feather for my pen! 

Upon my grandsire’s leathern cheek 
Five zones their bitter bronze had set: 

Some day their hazards I will seek, 

I promise me at times. Not yet. 

I think my grandsire now would turn 
A mild but speculative eye 

On me, my pen and its concern. 

Then gaze again to sea—and sigh. 


13 


AUTUMN 


Now droops the troubled year 
And now her tiny sunset stains the leaf. 

A holy fear, 

A rapt, elusive grief. 

Make imminent the swift, exalting tear. 

The long wind’s weary sigh— 

Knowest, O listener! for what it wakes? 

Adown the sky 

What star of Time forsakes 
Her pinnacle? What dream and dreamer die? 

A presence half-divine 
Stands at the threshold, ready to depart 
Without a sign. 

Now seems the world’s deep heart 
About to break. What sorrow stirs in mine? 


14 


A mist of twilight rain 
Hides now the orange edges of the day. 
In vain, in vain 
We labor that thou stay, 

Beauty who wast, and shalt not be again 


15 


THE PRINCESS ON THE HEADLAND 


My mother the queen is dead. 

My father the king is old. 

He fumbles his cirque of gold 
And dreams of a year long fled. 
The young men stare at my face. 
But cannot meet my glance— 
Cavan tall as a lance, 

Orra swift in the race. 

Death was ever my price. 

Since my maidenhood began: 

At the thought of a Gaelic man 
My heart is sister of ice. 

’T is another for whom I wait, 

Tho I have not kissed his sword: 
Pie or none is my lord. 

Though our night be soon or late. 

The star grows great in my breast: 
It is crying clearly now 
To the star on the burnished prow 
Of his galley far in the West. 


The capes of the North are dim. 

And the windward beaches smoke, 
Where the last long roller spoke 
The tidings it held of him. 

Sorrow I know he brings. 

Battle, despair and change,— 
Beauty cruel and strange, 

And the shed bright blood of kings. 
Breast, be white for his sake! 

Mouth, be red for the kiss! 

Soul, be strong for your bliss! 
Heart, be ready to break! 


17 


THE ASHES IN THE SEA 


NORA MAY FRENCH 
1907 

Whither, with blue and pleading eyes,— 
Whither, with cheeks that held the light 
Of winter’s dawn on cloudless skies, 
Evadne, was thy flight? 

Such as a sister’s was thy brow; 

Thy hair seemed fallen from the moon— 
Part of its radiance, as now 
Of shifting tide and dune. 

Did Autumn’s grieving lure thee hence. 

Or silence ultimate beguile? 

Ever our things of consequence 
Awakened but thy smile. 

Is it with thee that ocean takes 
A stranger sorrow to its tone? 

With thee the star of evening wakes 
More beautiful, more lone? 

18 


For wave and hill and sky betray 
A subtle tinge and touch of thee; 

Thy shadow lingers in the day. 

Thy voice in winds to be. 

Beauty—hast thou discovered her 
By deeper seas no moons control? 

What stars have magic now to stir 
Thy swift and wilful soul? 

Or may thy heart no more forget 

The grievous world that once was home, 
That here, where love awaits thee yet. 
Thou seemest yet to roam? 

For most, far-wandering, I guess 
Thy witchery on the haunted mind. 

In valleys of thy loneliness, 

Made clean with ocean's wind. 


19 


And most thy presence here seems told. 
The waif of elemental deeps. 

When, at its vigils unconsoled. 

Some night of winter weeps. 


20 


THE VOICE OF THE DOVE 


Hear I the mourning-dove. 

As now the swallow floats 
Low o’er the shadowed oats? 

Soft as the voice of love. 

Hear I her slow and supplicating notes? 

O fugitive! O lone! 

O burden pure and strong 
That summer noons prolong! 

O link in music shown 
Between the silence and an angel’s song! 

The dulcimer and lute 

Hoard not so swoonless woe. 

What grief of long ago 
Would now thy tones transmute 
To what we sought afar and could not know? 


21 


Thy yearnings yet elude 
Our quest and scrutiny, 

Tho mortals echo thee 
Thy moan in solitude 

For dreams that are not nor shall ever be. 

So broken waters hold 
A voice to sorrow set,— 

A world’s foreknown regret, 
Immutable, untold. 

So seas remember, tho our souls forget. 


22 


SPRING IN CARMEL 


O’er Carmel fields in the springtime the sea-gulls 
follow the plow. 

White, white wings on the blue above! 

White were your brow and breast, O Love! 

But I cannot see you now. 

Tireless ever the Mission swallow 
Dips to meadow and poppied hollow; 

Well for her mate that he can follow. 

As the buds are on the bough. 

By the woods and waters of Carmel the lark is 
glad in the sun. 

Harrow! harrow! music of God! 

Near to your nest her feet have trod, 

Whose journeyings are done. 

Sing, O lover! I cannot sing. 

Wild and sad are the thoughts you bring. 

Well for you are the skies of spring, 

And to me all skies are one. 

In the beautiful woods of Carmel an iris bends to 
the wind. 


23 


O thou far-off and sorrowful flower! 

Rose that I found in a tragic hour! 

Rose that I shall not find! 

Petals that fell so soft and slowly, 

Fragrant snows on the grasses lowly, 

Gathered now would I call you holy 
Ever to eyes once blind. 

In the pine-sweet valley of Carmel the cream-cups 
scatter in foam. 

Azures of early lupin there! 

Now the wild lilac floods the air 
Like a broken honey-comb. 

So could the flowers of Paradise 
Pour their souls to the morning skies; 

So like a ghost your fragrance lies 
On the path that once led home. 

On the emerald hills of Carmel the spring and 
winter have met. 

Here I find in a gentled spot 
The frost of the wild forget-me-not. 

And—I cannot forget. 

24 


Heart once light as the floating feather 
Borne aloft in the sunny weather, 

Spring and winter have come together— 

Shall you and she meet yet? 

On the rocks and beaches of Carmel the surf is 
mighty to-day. 

Breaker and lifting billow call 
To the high, blue Silence over all 
With the word no heart can say. 

Time-to-be, shall I hear it ever? 

Time-that-is, with the hands that sever. 

Cry all words but the dreadful “Never !” 

And name of her far away! 


25 


AUTUMN IN CARMEL 


Now with a sigh November comes to the brooding 

land. 

Yellowing now toward winter the willows of Car¬ 
mel stand. 

Under the pine her needles lie redder with the 

rain. 

Gipsy birds from the northland visit our woods 

again. 

Hunters wait on the hillside, watching the plow- 
. man pass 

And the red hawk’s shadow gliding over the new¬ 
born grass. 

Purple and white the sea-gulls swarm at the river- 

mouth. 

Pearl of mutable heavens towers upon the south. 

Westward pine and cypress stand in a sadder 
* light. 

Flocks of the veering curlew flash for an instant 

white, 


26 


Wreaths of the mallard, shifting, melt on the 

vacant blue. 

Over the hard horizon dreams are calling anew. 

Dumb with the sense of wonder hidden from hand 

and eye,— 

Wistful yet for the Secret ocean and earth deny,— 

Baffled for Beauty’s haunting, hearts are peaceless 

to-day, 

Seeing the dusk of sapphire deepen within the 

bay. 

Far on the kelp the heron stands for awhile at 

rest. 

The lichen-colored breaker hollows a leaning 

breast. 

Desolate, hard and tawny, the sands lie clean and 

wide, 

Dry with the wafted sea-wind, wet with the fallen 

tide. 

Early the autumn sunset tinges to mauve the foam; 

Shyly the rabbit, feeding, crosses the road to home. 
27 


Daylight, lingering golden, touches the tallest tree, 
Ere the rain, like silver harp-strings, comes slant¬ 
ing in from sea. 


28 


V DIRGE 


FROM “LILITH” 

O lay her gently where the lark is nesting 
And winged things are glad! 

Tears end, and now begins the time of resting 
For her whose heart was sad. 

Give roses, but a fairer bloom is taken. 

Strew lilies—she was one. 

Gone in her silence to a place forsaken 
By roses and the sun. 

Deep is her slumber at the last of sorrow, 

Of twilight and the rain. 

Her eyes have closed forever on to-morrow 
And on to-morrow’s pain. 


29 


SANCTUARY 


Often I long, in cities wrung by care, 

Awhile in ancient solitudes to sink, 

And stand delaying at a rillet’s brink. 

The pilgrim hears but woodland murmurs there. 
And water falling with a sound like prayer 
In hidden pools where only thrushes drink, 

The singing silver joining, link by link. 

Their shadowed crystal, pure as ocean air. 

Hold cool your canyons, O eternal hills! 

For where the voices are not I would be, 

Led to your heart by those betraying rills. 
Happy, tho for a little, that release. 

In twilights where old memories summon me 
To drain the lonely chalice of your peace. 


30 


THE RACK 


In Hell a voice awoke. 

And slowly spoke. 

“Not for God’s vengeance met. 
Not for my torment-sweat. 

Not for these agonies 
Break I our silences: 

Behold their pain excelled 
By rapture once unheld. 

In Earth’s benignest land 
We wandered hand in hand. 

All beauty and all woe 
Were hers awhile to know; 

All griefs were given her. 

And I sole comforter. 

Slowly her love awoke 
And like a lily broke; 

But ah! to me more dear 
The roses of the year. 

And I would wander far 


31 


Below the crimson star. 

Slow as the jasmine grows 
I won her from her snows. 
Telling with word and deed 
My hunger and her need, 

Till, all the stream unbarred. 
Her blood flowed passionward. 
Awhile she recked of shame, 
And spoke her Saviour’s name: 
Awhile her saints did call, 

Then promised all. 

That night there could not be 
The Bliss for her and me; 

But soon her lord must go 
Beyond the flooded Po; 

And soon, in steel arrayed 
Went forth his cavalcade; 

Then turned my Sweet to me 
Telling when all could be— 

Ah! God of hate! who heard 
Her swiftly spoken word? 


32 


’Mid unseen flowers a-bloom 
We came across the gloom, 

But in that garden-close 
Was dark, O Death! thy rose; 

And ere mad lips caressed 
Or breast was hurled to breast,— 
Ere broke her last appeal, 

I felt his bravos’ steel— 

O stealthy hounds that crept 
Where the low fountains wept! 

So fell the eternal night 
Upon our lost delight, 

And where its horror lies 
I think of Paradise; 

Yet not as they that crave 
The coolness of its wave— 

Sweeter than all therein 
The sin we could not sin! 

Yea! tho infernal art 
Goad the remorseful heart, 

Till primacies of pain 
Within this bosom reign, 

33 


First of their legion, first, 

Is that unsated thirst!— 

The pang of lips unkissed, 
The rack of raptures missed!” 

Then on that fury fell 
The silences of Hell. 


34 ? 


IN THE MARKET-PLACE 


Rev. xviii: 10-13. 

In Babylon, high Babylon, 

What gear is bought and sold? 

All merchandise beneath the sun 
That bartered is for gold: 

Amber and oils from far beyond 
The desert and the fen, 

And wines whereof our throats are fond— 
Yea! and the souls of men! 

In Babylon, grey Babylon, 

What goods are sold and bought? 

Vesture of linen subtly spun. 

And cups from agate wrought; 

Raiment of many-colored silk 
For some fair denizen, 

And ivory more white than milk- 
Yea! and the souls of men! 

In Babylon, old Babylon, 

What cargoes on the piers? 

35 


Pearls from a tepid ocean won. 

And gems that are as tears; 

Arrows and javelins that prevail 
Against the lion’s den, 

And brazen chariots and mail— 

Yea! and the souls of men! 

In Babylon, mad Babylon, 

What get you for your pence ? 

A moiety of cinnamon, 

Of flour and frankincense; 

But let the shekels in your keep 
Be multiplied by ten, 

And you shall purchase slaves and sheep— 
Yea! and the souls of men! 

In Babylon, sad Babylon, 

What chattels shall invite? 

A wife whenas your youth is done. 

Or leman for a night. 

Before Astarte’s portico 
The torches flare again; 

The shadows come, the shadows go— 

Yea, and the souls of men! 


In Babylon, dark Babylon, 

Who take the wage of shame? 

The scribe and singer, one by one, 
That toil for gold and fame. 

They grovel to their masters’ mood; 

The blood upon the pen 
Assigns their souls to servitude— 
Yea! and the souls of men! 


■4 


37 


WILLY PITCHER 


Sharon, Conn. 

He is forgotten now, 

And humble dust these thirty years and more— 
He whose young eyes and beautiful wide brow 
My thoughts alone restore. 

Dead, and his kindred dead! 

And none remembers in that quiet place 
The slender form, the brown and faunlike head. 
The wildly wistful face. 

And yet across the years 
I see us roam among the apple-trees, 

Telling our tale of boyish hopes and fears 
Amid the hurried bees. 

When I am all alone 
By the eternal beauty of the sea. 

Or where the mountain’s eastern shade is thrown, 
His face comes back to me— 


38 


A memory unsought,— 

A ghost entreating, and I know not why,— 
A presence that the restless winds of thought 
Acknowledge with a sigh; 

Till I am half content 
Not any more the loneliness to know 
Of him who died so young and innocent, 

And ah! so long ago! 


39 


THE HUNTING OF DIAN 


In the silence of a midnight lost, lost forevermore, 
I stood upon a nameless beach where none had 
been before, 

And red gold and yellow gold were the shells 
upon that shore. 

Lone, lone it was as a mist-enfolded strand 
Set round a lake where marble demons stand— 
Held like a sapphire-stone in Thibet’s monstrous 
hand. 

And there I beheld how One stood in her grace 
To hold to the stars her wet and faery face, 

And on the smooth and haunted sands her footfall 
had no trace. 

White, white was she as the youngest seraph’s 
word. 

Or milk of Eden’s kine or Eden’s fragrant curd, 
Cast in love by Eve’s wan hand to her most snowy 
bird. 


40 


Fair, fair was she as Venus of the sky, 

And the jasmine of her breast and starlight of 
her eye 

Made the heart a pain and the soul a hopeless sigh. 

Weak with the sight I leaned upon my sword. 

Till my soul that had sighed was become an un¬ 
seen chord 

For stress of music rendered to unknown things 
adored. 

Surely she heard, but her beauty gave no sign 

To me for whom the hushed sea was odorous as 
wine,— 

To me for whom the voiceless world was made her 
silent shrine. 

And she sent forth her gaze to the waters of the 
West, 

And she sent forth her soul to the Islands of the 
Blest, 

Below a star whose silver throes set pearls upon 
her breast. 


41 


But chill in the East broke a glory on the lands, 

And she moaned like some low wave that dies on 
frozen sands. 

And held to her sea-lover her sweet and cruel 
hands. 

Then rose the moon, and its lance was in her side, 

And there was bitter music because in woe she cried, 

Ere on the hard and gleaming beach she laid her 
down and died. 

I leapt to her succor, my sword I left behind; 

But one low mound of opal foam was all that I 
could find— 

A moon-washed length of airy gems that trembled 
in the wind. 

I knelt below the stars; the sea put forth a wave; 

The moon drew up the captive tides upon her 
shining grave, 

As far away I heard the cry her dim sea-lover 
gave. 


42 


THE LAST DAYS 


The russet leaves of the sycamore 
Lie at last on the valley floor— 

By the autumn wind swept to and fro 
Like ghosts in a tale of long ago. 

Shallow and clear the Carmel glides 

Where the willows droop on its vine-walled sides. 

The bracken-rust is red on the hill; 

The pines stand brooding, somber and still; 

Grey are the cliffs, and the waters grey, 

Where the seagulls dip to the sea-born spray. 
Sad November, lady of rain, 

Sends the goose-wedge over again. 

Wilder now, for the verdure’s birth. 

Falls the sunlight over the earth; 

Killdees call from the fields where now 
The banding blackbirds follow the plow; 
Rustling poplar and brittle weed 
Whisper low to the river-reed. 


43 


Days departing linger and sigh; 
Stars come soon to the quiet sky; 
Buried voices, intimate, strange, 
Cry to body and soul of Change; 
Beauty, eternal fugitive, 

Seeks the home that we cannot give. 


44 


FATHER COYOTE 


At twilight time, when the lamps are lit, 

Father coyote comes to sit 

At the chaparral’s edge, on the mountain-side— 

Comes to listen and to deride 

The rancher’s hound and the rancher’s son. 

The passer-by and everyone. 

And we pause at milking-time to hear 
His reckless carolling, shrill and clear,— 

His terse and swift and valorous troll. 

Ribald, rollicking, scornful, droll. 

As one might sing in coyotedom: 

“Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!” 

Yet well I wot there is little ease 
Where the turkeys roost in the almond trees. 

But mute forebodings, canny and grim, 

As they shift and shiver along the limb. 

And the dog flings back an answer brief 
(Curse o’ the honest man on the thief). 

And the cat, till now intent to rove. 

Stalks to her lair by the kitchen stove; 

45 


Not that she fears the rogue on the hill; 

But—no mice remain, and—the night is chill. 
And now, like a watchman of the skies. 

Whose glance to a thousand valleys flies, 

The moon glares over the granite ledge— 

Pared a slice on its upper edge. 

And father coyote waits no more. 

Knowing that down on the valley floor. 

In a sandy nook all cool and white. 

The rabbits play and the rabbits fight. 

Flopping, nimble, skurrying, 

Careless now with the surge of Spring. . . . 
Furry lover, alack! alas! 

Skims your fate o’er the moonlit grass! 


46 


THE MIDGES 


Alcon, the wood-god, wandering his realm, 

Found his son Astries in the meadowland 
At sunset, squatted on a fallen pine 
And much intent upon a swarm of gnats. 

To whom the godling: “Father, I have stayed 
This hour to wonder at yon tiny folk, 

Who dart, and hum, and make so much ado. 

Mad with the sunlight. What it is they seek 
And whom they praise, and why, I do not know; 
But as the hour grows old, and twilight hills 
Put on the purple, this I see—that they 
With wilder zeal do dash this way and that. 

And where each in a foot of space had range. 
Now flits he two, and shriller grows the cry, 
Larger the host, and greater its concern. 

Dost note?” Whereat brown Alcon plucked a 
root 

And beat it on the pine, and briefly spake: 

“Aye! aye! they call it ‘Progress’!” And the sun 
Sank on the forest, and the night was chill. 


47 


CONSPIRACY 


I had a dream of some great house of stone, 

Not dark, but open to the northern ray. 
Beneath a cold and somber sky it lay, 

Soundless and secret, mournful and alone. 

It had no prospect save upon the sky— 

Set in a great and old and windy wood. 
Profound its essence seemed, but not of good; 
Yet had one asked, none could have answered why. 

A single door it had, that faced the east. 
Ponderous, brazen and without a lock. 

I thought, as stubbornly I dared to knock, 

That past the sill a cryptic murmur ceased. 

And none said “Enter!” yet I entered there, 

And saw that house was all one marble room. 
Austere, and given to the dead, for whom 
The wall held chiseled couches, scant and bare. 


48 


Arctic, immense, no pillar stayed that hall. 

And from the north the melancholy light 
Sank through translucent windows, vast and 
white, 

On alabaster niche and frozen pall. 

Rigid they lay, that session of the dead, 

From whom the hands of Change seemed held a 
space. 

With folded arms and enigmatic face, 
Marmorean, as portion of their bed. 

And half I thought that wafts of presence stole 
On the urned air significantly still, 

Upon whose wintry crystal crept a chill 
That fell not on the body but the soul. 

That air unused, it seemed to crave escape 
From that sad hall, to be a wind again. 

I felt a terror of those tranquil men, 

And feared the wisdom of each silent shape. 


49 


Whereat I turned, importunate, to win 

My way to life’s complacencies once more; 
Which done, behind the safety of the door 
Again I heard that muttering begin. 


50 


IN AUTUMN 


Mine eyes fill, and I know not why at all. 

Lies there a country not of time and space— 
Some fair and irrecoverable place 
I roamed ere birth and cannot now recall?— 

A land where petals fall 
On paths that I shall nevermore retrace? 

Something is lacking from the wistful bow’rs, 

And I have lost that which I never had. 

The sea cries, and the heavens and sea are sad, 
And Love goes desolate, yet is not ours. 

Brown Earth alone is glad, 

Robing her breast with fallen leaves and flow’rs. 

High memories stir; the spirit’s feet are slow, 

In nameless fields where tears alone are fruit, 
And voices of the wind alone transmute 
The music that I lost so long ago. 

I stand irresolute, 

Lonely for some one I shall never know. 


51 


SAUL 


“And they put his armor in the house of 
Ashtoreth .”—I Samuel, xxxi, 10. 

Weep for the one so strong to slay, whom One has 
taken at last! 

Mourn for the mail that rings no more and the 
ruin unforecast! 

This was he of the flaming heart and the deep, 
heroic breath, 

Whose sword is laid and his aimor hung in the 
House of Ashtoreth. 

Weep for the one so swift to slay, whose knees 
have bent to the night! 

Dust is thick on his thresholds now, tho trumpets 
call to the fight. 

Slinger and bowman gather fast, but our strong 
man does not come. 

Captains long for his counsels now, but the sated 
lips are dumb. 

Cry his name in the citadel, sending the runners 
forth: 


52 


The South gives back no rumor of him; in vain 
they question the North. 

Seek him not where the wall is held or the spears 
go in to death, 

Whose shield is laid and his armor hung in the 
House of Ashtoreth. 

This was he grown mighty in war, but her war is 
otherwise : 

Swords that flash from her bosom bared, arrows 
cast from her eyes. 

Who shall stoop from her javelin thrown, who 
from her singing dart? 

Her sudden shaft is hot in his loins, her steel in 
his maddened heart. 

Deep in the still and altared dusk her lamp glows 
small and red. 

Mirrored clear in the great cuirass, like the 
rubies of her bed; 

Blood of light on his burnished helm, on the belt 
and the greaves, one saith 

Whose spear is laid and his armor hung in the 
House of Ashtoreth. 

53 


Tho Gath go up to the threshing-floors, or hosts 
assemble at Tyre, 

Wait no more for your prince’s word, who has 
taken his desire. 

Cities and fields and given hearts, honor and life 
were weighed. 

The balance shown and the end foreseen and the 
deep decision made. 

Weep for the one so strong in war, whose war is 
now of the Dark! 

Well he harnessed his breast with steel, but her 
arrows find their mark. 

Her hands have loosened the brazen belt and her 
breath has found his breath 

Whose sword is laid and his armor hung in the 
House of Ashtoreth. 


54 


A LOST GARDEN 


Under November skies. 

In lovely ruin lies 

A garden, long deserted by the birds. 

The lacquered gold of old magnolia leaves 
Gleams on its hidden lawn 
Like sweet, forgotten words. 

Here a lone poplar, slender-shafted, grieves, 

An hour before the dawn. 

Tranquil the sunlight falls 
As afternoon recalls 

The clime that summer’s vanished feet have 
crossed. 

A memory’s lily flashes on the glance, 

Like dryad-silver seen 
For but a breath, then lost 
Far down the western vistas of romance. 

In forests old and green. 

Here lies a reedless pool. 

Mysterious and cool, 

55 


Within whose breast, like a remembered sin 
A mirrored flower casts her scarlet moon. 

Silent the bloom above. 

Silent the bloom within, 

As lovers fearful lest they tell too soon 
Their sorrow and their love. 

Dusk has a gentler grace 
Within this quiet place. 

Unhaunted yet by winds that soon shall come. 
The shadows meet. The world accepts the night, 
The night her youngest star. 

An owl, no longer dumb. 

Cries hollowly. A shape beyond the sight 
Responds, and from afar. 

Larger for her delay. 

Slow on the path of day, 

The moon gives softly of her phantom gold. 

The pool, untroubled yet, receives the lure— 
Fain of that fleeting gift, 

Ungatherable, cold, 

Ancient, and as the snows of winter pure, 

Caught in the glacier’s rift. 


56 


Upon the morning sky 
The nameless clouds go by, 

Flower of the heavens and their unchanging 
dream, 

Fled in an hour and in an hour renewed. 

On ways untrod they soar 
Whose fallen shadows stream 
On paths of this reproachful solitude, 

Where footsteps come no more. 

But day or night, the spot 
To things imagined not 
Stirs mournfully, as eddying, the leaf 
Sinks earthward to the wind’s autumnal moan. 
Here, tho no word be said, 

One finds, in twilights brief, 

A presence and its whisper, still unknown 
And still uncomforted. 

So shall it be till spring 
Return, and linnets sing 
On dawns too delicate for other sound. 

And eves aeolian with the harps of rain,— 

57 


Till Earth again confess 
Her dreaming heart has found 
The beautiful Illusion and its pain. 
So rich in happiness. 


58 


THE GLASS OF TIME 


I know a lake high up among the hills— 

A pure tranquillity where shadows rest, 
Accepting to its melancholy breast 
The silver-throated rills. 

A solitary killdee, running fleet, 

(The one unquiet thing that meets the sight) 
Slips like a bead along the thread of light 
Where land and water meet. 

Silent around the forest ramparts press, 

Walling with emerald its quietude, 

Ere Evening and her mystery o’erbrood 
That hush and holiness. 

There secretly the large-eyed stag is found, 

And there at dawn the stealing mist that finds 
Upon its arras the delaying winds. 

Too ghostly for a sound. 


59 


Morning, with distant voices in the wood, 

Shortens the shadows, hour by fragrant hour. 
Voiceless awhile, the redwood sentries tow’r 
Where once their fathers stood. 

Lucid, serene, untroubled by a wind, 

The noonday crystal slumbers, cool and deep, 
Calm as the features of a nun asleep, 

Whom not a dream shall find. 

Elusively, a sense of things unheard 
Awakes, and is forgotten as it dies. 

The afternoon is great with peace. Then cries, 
Far off, and once, a bird. 

The slow-winged clouds pass in unhast’ning flight 
To some far haven of Hesperian ease, 

Paving that court of chill translucencies 
With alabaster light. 


60 


Therein, as in her sky, the moon shall melt, 

The stars find sanctuary for a space, 

Till morning, uncompassionate, efface 
The palace where they dwelt. 

There if one come, he fills that placid glass 
With azure glory of the mirrored sky. 

Fading, the vision and the glory die 
With him whose footsteps pass. . . . 

Lake of the spirit, even so shall cease 

(A pale mirage in heavens profound and far) 
The face of Beauty, passing like a star 
From peace to vaster peace. 


61 


SAILS 


In the growing haste of the world must this thing 
be: 

The passing of sails forever from the sea? 

Fewer always the sails go out to the West; 

More and huger the steamers howl to the star— 
Trailing their smoke afar. 

Staining the deep and the heavens’ patient breast. 

Mighty are these we have tamed— 

Giants electric, monsters of gas and of steam, 
Titans unknown tho named. 

But oh! for a younger sea and the sails’ glad 
gleam, 

And the clean horizon’s call 
And the Powers of the air man never shall tame 
at all! 

Was it not well with the world 
And well with the heart, 

When ships went forth to lands untraced on a 
chart ?— 

When the dauntless wings were furled 
In wonderful havens, virgin then of a mast. 


62 


At islands without a past, 

Girt around with an alien ocean’s foam, 
Over the world from home? 


O mariners! Sea-lords of a stranger blue! 

Kings of the planet’s sapphire morning! You 
That had Mystery for loot! 

Serfs of a sharp unrest that asked no curing 
But that of golden and dragon-guarded fruit, 
Where, past the sky-line luring, 

The dim Hesperides 

Echoed like purple shells the sirened seas! 

A vestige of your kingdom lies in light 
Where a lone sail goes out against the night. 

O path on which the fleets of the world were led! 
Changing, changeless road of marvel and death,— 
Of songless birds o’er meadows that none shall 
tread! 

Of empire gone in a breath 
As the keels of the quick descend to the keels of 
the dead 

In havens lightless and blind! 

63 


In the hurry of things shall the sails depart from 
thee— 

They, kin to the clouds of the sea, 

And driven even as clouds by the harborless wind ? 
For I dream of the wonderful wings 
Of the old Phoenician quest 
Deeper and deeper into the mystical West,— 

Of forgotten ocean-kings. 

When the galley wandered forth, 

And the sail shone white on the cold horizon-line. 
Like an iceberg’s peak that lifted far in the North. 

For I dream of the purple brine 
And the blazoned pomp of the saint on the 
galleon’s van. 

As, dark from the deep, the sails of Raleigh or 
Drake 

On the gold of morning ran. 

For I dream of battles entered for England’s sake. 
And Nelson’s high war-frigates with canvas taut 
Above the thunder of cannon, the world at stake. 
And the world with death well-bought. 

* * * 


64 


Splendid now on my dream 
The snows of the clipper gleam. 

Towers of marble, glorious, tall in the sun— 
Hurling south to the hurricanes of the Horn. 

O pinions, wrenched and torn 
By the north Atlantic’s breath. 

On homing whalers, three years’ cruising done. 
(Captain! captain! what of the seas of Death?) 
O colored sails of the little fishing-boats. 

From a thousand turquoise harbors venturing, 
Under the tropic day! 

Grey canvases that bring 
The shapely sealers to San Francisco Bay, 

Where the steel-walled cruiser floats. 

But I hear a naiad sing, 

And softer now in my vision the vans of silk 
Glimmer on eastern shallops, by dusk adrift 
On waters of legend; and webs as white as milk 
Are wafting a murdered queen to her island tomb, 
Where the cypress columns lift. 

And ghostly now on the gloom 
The shrouded spars of the Flying Dutchman go 
To harbors that none shall know; 


65 


Foamless the ripples of her passing die 
Across the dark, and then from the dark, a cry! 

O light of the sea-solitude! O sails! 

Must you pass even so 

To the realms of fantasy and the olden tales? 
Ports of oblivion, hidden far from the sun, 

At your anchorage shall every one be furled, 
These wings of man’s adventure around the 
world— 

Like the old beauties dying, one by one? 

Ever the clouds return: shall these come back 
On the wind’s uncharted track— 

Braving again the deep’s immortal wrath? 

O wings of man’s adventure in old years! 

Here at an ocean’s brink 
Whence the great, increasing quest 
On the everlasting path 

Draws yet the heart and the hand to the sea’s 
frontiers 

And spaces scornful of rest. 

Under the night’s first star I watch you sink. 

In the world’s twilight fading, fading West. 


66 


THE COMMON CULT 


Up to the House of Mammon, from dawn to sister 
dawn. 

Called by remembered voices the sons of men are 
drawn; 

By noon the dust goes skyward, by night the 
torches flare. 

On veining roads that mingle—and you and I are 
there. 

Around the House of Mammon, like ruined cities* 
stones. 

The stubborn and the haughty have left their 
trampled bones. 

They were the few in number that would not enter 
in, 

Saying, “The god is evil.” Saying, “To kneel 
is sin.** 

The ebony House of Mammon goes up against the 
sky; 

The north wind and the south wind before its 
portals die. 

67 


Its towers go near to Heaven, its vaults go nearer 
Hell, 

And all are fat with favor to some who serve them 
well. 

Before the House of Mammon stand you not over- 
long, 

But enter to the worship, unnoted in the throng; 

There it is ill to parley, to ask the why or when, 

For he whose line would prosper shall be as other 
men. 

Within the House of Mammon august the twilights 
are. 

Across whose gulf the portal gleams smaller than 
a star. 

The bucklers of the mighty in rust and ruin melt. 

Above those deep foundations where king and 
pontiff knelt. 

Within the House of Mammon low thunder of loud 

pray’rs 

Rolls from the burdened pavement and coiled, 
colossal stairs— 

68 


Petition and obeisance, when each makes known 
his need, 

Begging the flamens hearken, begging the largess 
speed. 

Within the House of Mammon his priesthood 
stands alert, 

By mysteries attended, by dusk and splendors 
girt, 

Knowing, for faiths departed, his own shall still 
endure, 

And they be found his chosen, untroubled, solemn, 
sure. 

Within the House of Mammon the golden altar 
lifts 

Where dragon-lamps are shrouded as costly 
incense drifts— 

A dust of old ideals, now fragrant from the coals, 

To tell of hopes long ended, to tell the death of 
souls. 

Within the House of Mammon there is no need of 
song, 

69 


And faced by them who doubt not, no doubt en¬ 
dures for long; 

Tho twilight hold the temple, there yet each one 

shall see 

The Word of Words, the letters that spell 
“Necessity.” 

Beyond the House of Mammon there is no need 
to go, 

And other fanes are shadow whose figments melt 
and flow. 

Grown weary of the service, no scoffer long 
derides. 

For past the veils and darkness a very god 
abides. . . . 

Above the House of Mammon the hours and ages 
tread, 

Nor find the ramparts shaken nor see the sentries 
fled. 

Till o’er the massy columns, broken like those of 
Tyre, 

The long-awaited Morning go winged with crys¬ 
tal fire. 


ATTHAN DANCES 


FROM “TRUTH** 

The silver of the lyre 

Cries, and your silver feet 
Like living flowers repeat 
Your body’s silver fire. 

What scents without a name 
Within your tresses hide? 

What perfect roses died 
To give your mouth its flame? 

Your hands, uplifting, float 
More delicate than Love’s. 

Your breasts are two white doves 
Whose moan is in your throat. 

As lyre and cithern swoon. 

You linger, in your pace 

The panther’s gift of grace. 

Who glides below the moon. 


71 


O linger where I sigh 
Above the golden wine. 

And touch your mouth to mine— 
A scarlet butterfly. 


72 


THE SECRET GARDEN 


Hidden from all it lies 
But the revealing skies. 

Whose highest star is lamp and warden here. 
The leopards of the palace prowl not near, 

And foiled are cruel eyes. 

Marble has walled around 
The myrtle-given ground, 

And cypress-tow’rs dismay the song of birds, 
Where two find now the needlessness of words, 
And two alone are found. 

In dream or reverie. 

Beyond the wood they see 
The wind’s wan hand, admitted or withdrawn, 
Stirring the golden arras of the dawn 
Or dusk’s red tapestry. 


73 


Where the wind sorroweth 
It strews with drifting breath 
The snow of petals or their cool turquoise. 
Beauty that leaves the heart but tears for 
Has refuge here—and death. 

Whether the brown bees hum. 

Or leaf and lip are dumb, 

The passion told is told beyond recall. 

The silence made an answer unto all. 

Where two alone may come. 

Love hears in this domain 
The moan born not of pain. 

The roses of the bower and the face. 

The scarlet of the flow’r and the embrace. 
Are brief, but not in vain. 

But whatso word love say. 

No word of love can stay 
The long delight whose music is a sigh. 

The rapture and the beauty soon to die 
No clinging hands delay. 

74 


For whether midnight moon 
Or light of afternoon 
Weave silently the shadows of the flow’rs. 
Too soon is come an ending of the hours, 
And parting come too soon. 


75 


TO A GIRL DANCING 


Has the wind called you sister? 

Sister to Kypris, who, as the far foam kissed her, 
Rose exquisite and white. 

For seeing you, we dream of all swift things 
And of the swallow’s flight,— 

Of sea-birds drifting on untroubled wings. 

And incense swaying at the shrine of kings, 

In gossamers of violescent light. 

In what Sicilian meadows, cool with dew. 

Ran rosier girls than you, 

With tresses dancing free, 

To tell how beautiful the world might be? 

In what high days unborn, 

Will sheerer loveliness go forth at morn, 

To wave a brief farewell to night’s last star? 
For you, we envy not the lost and far. 

As now you make our day 
As happy and imperial as they. 

More than the ripple of grass and waters flow¬ 
ing- 
76 


More than the panther’s grace 
Or lily moved by winds from sunset blowing, 
Your limbs in rapture trace 
An evanescent pattern on the sight— 

Beauty that lives an instant, to become 
A sister beauty and a new delight. 

So full you feed the heart that hearts are dumb. 
Those little hands set back the hands of time. 
Till we remember what the world has dreamed. 
In her own clime. 

Of Beauty, and her tides that ebb and flow 
Around old islands where her face has gleamed, 
The marvellous mirage of long ago. 

Ah! more than voice hath said 
They speak of revels fled— 

The alabastine and exultant thighs, 

The vine-encircled head. 

The rose-face lifted, lyric, to the skies, 

The loins by leaping roses garlanded. 

The sandaled years return, 

The lamps of Eros burn. 


77 


The flowers of Circe nod, 

And one may dream of other days and lands, 
Of other girls that touch unresting hands— 
Sad sirens of the god, 

To some forgotten tune 
Swaying their silvern hips below the moon. 
Dance on, for dreams they are indeed, 

A vision set afar, 

But you with warm, immediate beauty plead, 
And fragrant is your footfall on our star. 

O flesh made music in its ecstasy, 

Sing to us ere an end of song shall be! 

O fair things young and fleet! 

White flower of floating feet! 

Be glad! Be glad! for happiness is holy! 

Be glad awhile, for on the greensward slowly 
Summer and autumn pass. 

With shadows on the grass, 

Till in the meadow lowly 
November’s tawny reeds shall sigh “Alas!” 

Dear eyes, 

What see you on the azure of the skies? 


78 


Enchanted, eager face, 

Seek you young Love in his eternal place? 

Round arms upflung, what is it you would clasp— 
What far-off lover? 

Hands that a moment hover, 

What hands unseen evade awhile your grasp? 

Ah! that is best: to seek but not to find him; 

For found and loved the seasons yet will blind 
him. 

To this true heaven you are— 

That moth unworthy of your soul’s white star. 
Dance on, and dream of better things than he! 
Dance on, translating us the mortal’s guess 
At Beauty and her immortality— 

Yourself your flesh-clad art and loveliness. 

Dance, for the time comes when the dance is done 
And feet no longer run 
On paths of rapture leading from the day. 

Release not now 

The vine that you have bound about your brow: 
Dance, granting us awhile that we forget 
How morrows but delay. 


79 


Yet come as surely as their own regret. 

Through you the Past is ours. 

Through you the Future flow’rs, 

In you their dreams and happiness are met. 
Through you we find again 
That birth of bliss and pain. 

That thing of joy and tears and hope and laughter 
That men call youth— 

A greater thing than truth, 

A fairer thing than fame 

In songs hereafter, 

A miracle, an unreturning flame. 

The season for itself alone worth living, 

And needing not our patience nor forgiving. 

O heart that knows enough, and yet must learn 
The wisdom that we spurn! 

The years at last will teach you: 

May now no whisper reach you 
Of noons when pleading of the flutes shall cease, 
And not for rapture will you beg, but peace. 
To-day it seems too harsh that you should know 
How soon the wreaths must go, 


80 


And those flower-mating feet 
Be gathered, even as flowers, by cruel Time, 
Their flashing rhyme 

No more to mingle with the blood’s wild beat. 
Dance, with no wind to chill your perfect grace, 
Nor shadow on your face, 

Nor voice to call to unenduring rest 
The limbs delighting and the naked breast. 


81 


THE FAR FEET 


Afton Annesley, gone forever. 

Cold to-night are the stars above, 

That see all beauty, but never, never. 

One thing sweet as our woodland love. 

Over our heads the pines were sighing; 

Under us two their needles lay. 

Then was an end to all denying: 

All we feared was the break of day. 

Afton Annesley, ocean calling 
Echoes all of an old regret. 

Sea-mist rising and twilight falling 
Waken things that I half forget. 

Pain tho it were, let me remember 
All that met in the farewell kiss. 

Tears and rain of a far November, 

Equal now in the silences! 


82 


Afton Annesley, starlight only 

Lit your way to the trysting-tree. 
Here I find, on the wood-path lonely, 
Futile dreams of a tryst-to-be. 

Still would I seek you, past regaining, 
Grief and joy of a tragic year. 

Lost Elysium! Autumn, waning, 

Murmurs all—if the heart could hear. 


83 


HESPERIAN 


Strange, when the blood runs wild to-day in me, 
That I but dream of the faces now so far 

On the heart’s horizon, near, so near, to the sea. 
And setting dimly, star by fugitive star! 

Now, if ever, are days when the mounting bliss 
Should flood the limbs and wet with rapture the 
eyes: 

Strange, that I dream of only a tragic kiss. 

And a moon gone down forever on the skies. 

April bends to her poppies dropped in flight. 

O mother-month of Nature giving the breast, 

With the land a pure and emerald breadth of light, 
And ocean voices echoing out of the West! 

The romping wind had a sort of boyishness, 

Fled to tease the stranding cloud on the hill. 

Never a ripple moves the water cress 

In the stream, and the million-chorded pine is 
still. 


84 


Winter stars are gone with the winter rains, 

And almond petals long since gone from the 
bough. 

Birds begin to nest in the willow lanes. 

It is faun weather again in Carmel now. 

A cloud far lost on the high, eventless blue, 

And a vine whose little clarions have scent 
For sound, awaken the memory of you— 

Mist and myrrh in a dream unhappy blent. 


How many mutinous years ago to-day 

Did I watch you first as you wandered over the 
sands ? 

How many pitiless miles of dust away 

Do you wander now, and in what shadowy 
lands ? 


Well I remember how soon it was we stood. 

When the morning wind had gathered the night’s 
last tear. 


85 


And watched the clouds brim over the western 
wood. 

And “There,” you said, “are the snows of yes¬ 
teryear.” 

Glad am I now that I was too glad to muse 
On the snows that haunt the farther dreams of 
man, 

But took the kiss that the Fates of to-day refuse, 
And ran where you said an unseen dryad ran. 

Dream you, silver dryad that once you were, 

Of the wind and the sands and the sunset far 
away, 

Of the silence fallen, that only a kiss could stir, 
And the wild, golden wood-days, ever with yes¬ 
terday ? 

Well I remember foamless reaches of sea, 

Undulant, living, with shimmer of pale-blue 
silk; 

Gazing now where the winged foam leaps free, 
I remember your eyes, like agates bathed in 
milk. 

86 


Beauty’s paths—was there one that we did not 
take, 

Whether it wound by mosses of the sea 
Or led our feet to valleys of sage and brake, 
Where blue-jays tumbled, slim, in the buckeye 
tree? 

Morning girdled half of a world in gold. 
Gathered up in earth’s melodious hours. 

April walked with buds too many to hold. 

Till weary bees seemed taking their time with 
the flowers. 

Leaves, owl-brown, of a mottled sycamore, 
Stirred or slumbered on drowsy river-sand. 
Over the stream we watched a falcon soar, 

White o’ the breast, as you were white o’ the 
hand. 

Clouds of spring crept over a far-off hill. 
Lingering as a broken wind grew less. 

And a shadow lay like a hush made visible 
Where the redwood dreamed in an emerald lone¬ 
liness. 


Over the tawny meadowland at noon 

Hiving blackbirds surged and sank in their 
flight. 

Under the northern shadow of the dune. 

Sands were clean as the moon of day was white. 

Ocean shells with tint of an autumn leaf 
Lay where desolate beaches bade us roam; 

And we saw the edge of the wave well over the 
reef. 

Willow-green, till it broke to music and foam. 

Sounding sapphire and billows of choral jade, 
Deep and wild your song on the lucent air. 
As we watched the golden reefs of sunset fade, 
Ere our galleons of dream could founder there. 

Mournful, mute, for the world’s new loveliness, 
Sad and glad with the beauty of Time and 
love, 

We told it all in a wondering caress— 

Heedless of Time and the jealous stars above. 


88 


Mute or not, of your mouth I had its word, 

Softer than ear may know or a tongue impart; 
And a heart-whole even-song of a hidden bird 
Rose in the hush to make reply for my heart. 

Paths of peace that we shall not trace again, 
Where the Mariposa lily shone and waned, 

And Fremont’s flower blazed trail for the cycla¬ 
men ! 

O lily cup, and cup of our passion drained! 

O ghost of fire where the wind ran grey in the 

grass! 

Wild lilac bloom and audible rapture of bees! 
Branches bent for the feet of Love to pass! 

Voice of Love so low in the veiling trees! 

Rapture grown too deaf to listen or heed! 

Lips that cried in a music unsuppressed! 
Beauty given beyond all bearing or need! 

Pansy-bronze of your eyes, and apple-bloom of 
your breast! 


89 


O far away! do you never hearken in sleep 
As I, to an ocean-echo mingled with dream, 
From shore and reef of an indiscernible Deep— 
A music set to a memory supreme? 

Was it worth our pain, our desolation of loss? 

Was it best that our lips be given to other lips? 
Far on the blue the sails, ephemeral, cross. 

Over the West the star, immutable, slips. 

Here by the beauty and terror of the sea. 

On a dune between the sapphire and the pines, 
I have mused on all that your beauty meant to me, 
And a final beauty that love at last divines. 

I have watched for an hour the wave’s deliberate 
grace. 

I shall sit and dream of an old regret, I know, 
And the touch of things inviolate in your face. 

Till the granite facets take the afterglow. 


90 


Can it be that the thorns that we found at last so 
sharp 

Saved for us then our irretrievable rose, 

Tho the storm that took an ocean for its harp 
Died at last on the far, foreshadowing snows? 

Somehow, dumbly, out of this dark of things, 
Heart and soul find words of a wiser tongue, 
Somehow, blindly, take a splendor of wings, 
Made of the dreams we dreamt when we were 
young. 

Never a worthless flower the seasons find. 

Nor utter night, tho shadows fall as they must. 
Fresh on the brow is an ever-living wind 

From a Sea of change whose foam is blossoming 
dust. 

Surf-walls eternally builded, eternally overthrown. 
Deep in the heart we find your vision and song. 
Paths apart, that we took at last alone, 

Led you not to the greater hills ere long? 


91 


O wine we drank, whose very dregs were delight! 

I have seen your scarlet over a setting sun. 
Flower of flesh and flower of an April night! 

Far in the moon your loveliness is one. 

Fates that mix with beauty of sun and moon 
Love that seemed awhile the heart of a star, 
Would I yearn for its joy if it had not died so 
soon ? 

Would I dream of its grace if it had not fled so 
far? 


92 


THE MORNING STAR 


’Mid hush of wind and constellations paling, 
Thou gleamest yet, O herald of the dawn! 

Tho sister stars, whom light is slowly veiling, 
Tremble and pass, in quietude withdrawn. 

Now Nature, stilled as tho in adoration, 

Bids, voiceless, that the hallowed heart aspire 

To pause before thy beauty’s consummation 
And make itself the altar of thy fire. 

Slowly above the darkened forest creeping, 

One cloud, the lonely child of Heaven and 
Night, 

Across the sky goes desolate and weeping, 
Shrouding the north, but not thy vestal light. 

O incommunicable beauty burning 

With silent flame the body and the soul! 

The exalted gaze, in solitude upturning, 

Finds in thy star a mystery and goal. 


93 


Azures of twilight robe the southern mountain, 
Where wakes the bird to greet thee with his 
mirth, 

And see thine image in the tranquil fountain— 
Too bright, too calm, too pure a thing for earth. 

I dream that song can echo of thy singing. 

Who dream thou singest in thy clear domain. 

Till from thy zone the falling music, ringing, 
Mingles its crystal with the falling rain. 

Flushed as with radiance of wings immortal. 
Glow now the tracts on which thy glory came, 

Till through the amethystine eastern portal 
The morning comes, led by thy dying flame. 

Farewell! whose presence now and each to-morrow 
Makes lyrical the heavens and the years. 

Wedding the breath of ecstasy and sorrow, 

That beauty such as thine transcend its tears. 


94 


THE EVENING STAR 


Eastward in afterglow the mountains rise, 

An evanescent rose on granite fading— 

Far hues that seem, a crystal silence aiding, 
The walls of a deserted Paradise. 

The sunset dies, with scarlet pinions furled. . . . 
On azure plains the sea-winds sink or fal¬ 
ter. . . . 

Evening and ocean are thy shrine and altar, 

O grail of silver lifted to a world! 

The wine of thy pure chalice none shall drain; 
But he that sees thy vesper glory burning 
Shall walk the purple of thy kingdom, spurning 
All loveliness that haunts him without pain. 

The mighty waters, darkening afar, 

Throng the grey shores with mournful voices 
calling. 

Echoes reply. Earth’s shadow, eastward falling, 
Is cold upon the pathway of the star. 


95 


The loneliness departing sunsets leave 
Is deeper for the vision of thy splendor. 

Whose radiance, ethereal and tender. 

Burns tremorless upon the winter eve. 

O flame above the Islands of the Blest! 

Often, ah! often, not alone in story. 

Have young Love’s eyes been lifted to thy 
glory, 

Yearning to follow thee beyond the West— 

Yearning in vain, through all unhappy years: 

He shares with Beauty her inherent sorrow. 

As yesterday beheld, so must to-morrow 
Behold thy light regathered by his tears. 

The charts of sea and heavens limn thy flight, 
Yet still we seek a Land beyond, whose faces 
Forever gleam with thy mysterious traces— 
Touched faintly by thy slowly setting light. 


96 


O Land that youth alone, or folly, seeks! 

A Shadowland, these many years forbidden, 
By sunset or the last horizon hidden, 

And thou the fire above its altar-peaks. 

So art thou light to that which only seems; 
So art thou symbol of another Setting 
To us, unfortunate and unforgetting, 
Homesick for that lost country of our dreams. 


97 


TO THE MOON 


Whether by starry waters westward led. 

Where foam as white as thou is on the coast, 
Or when the lilies of the dawn are red. 

Ever thou seemest lonely, and a ghost. 

’Mid frost of stars I saw thee pace the night, 
High over quiet field and voiceless tree. 

When Sirius trembled like a tear of light, 

On sapphire darker than the morning sea. 

When ocean drank the dregs of sunset’s wine 
I watched thy keen-horned crescent sink and go, 
On islands past the vague horizon line 
Bent like a Titan’s huge and golden bow, 

Or like a wave that broke to stirless foam 
Upon a beach of Heaven, curved and vast— 
Sands where the shades of mariners might roam 
And watch a spectral sail go dumbly past. 


98 


And I have seen thee crumbling and decayed, 

A sepulchre of beauty long unsung— 

On whose chill nacre wreaths as chill were laid 
And sorrows graven in a nameless tongue. 

And I have seen thee glorious and great, 

Flooding the world and walking free of bars; 

Arcturus was thy captain at the gate, 

And thy companions were immortal stars. 

Yet ever wert thou wraith and wanderer 
Within that desolation of the sky. 

Gazing on realms where worlds no longer were, 
Whose death had shown thee how all worlds 
must die— 

Wherefore our own. Is it for this that we 
Are pensive in thy melancholy light. 

Guessing, from thine, the sun’s mortality, 

The cold and silence of the crypts of night? 


99 


Gleamest thou symbol of oblivion, 

Showing with frozen light, but light no less, 
What swords are on the roadway of the sun, 
What Shadows gather in the Timelessness? 

Or art thou pledge that recompense may be, 

And beauty, changing, still abide with death— 
A crystal clearer for an icy sea, 

A snowflake born of winter’s arctic breath? 

For still thou grantest to our dreams a way. 
Whether thy silver dawn is on the east. 

Or where, between the starlight and the day, 

Thy feet of alabaster go released; 

And ocean calls, remembering thy lure. 

And gathers jewels for thy path of flame, 
Heaped diamond, unfathomable, pure. 

From age to age reshattered—and the same. 


100 


As waters follow thee in wide pursuit, 

So dost thou lead us to a dream’s beyond. 
Washed by thy tides of pearl the land lies mute, 
And mute our souls, touched by thy magic’s 
wand. 

So lead awhile, till we be led no more. 

Nor take, as thou, our morrows from the 
sun. . . . 

Slowly, from mountain-peak to soundless shore, 
Time’s purple deepens to oblivion. 


101 


THE HIDDEN POOL 


Far in a wildwood dim and great and cool, 
I found a cavern old, 

Where grew, above a pure, unfathomed pool, 
A flower of elfin gold. 

There, tho the night came lone of any lamp, 
Chill on the flower fell 

A pallor faint, inimical and damp, 

A halo like in Hell. 

Lambent it gleamed within the twilight calm, 
Long fugitive of day— 

Malign, I thought, with alien dew and balm, 
A moon of baneful ray. 

A breath of attar, fallen from the bloom. 
Made opiate the air, 

Like wafture of an undulant perfume. 

Flown from enchanted hair. 


102 


A vampire bat, malignant, purple, cold, 

At midnight came to glean 
The honey that each petal would withhold 
From all but the unclean. 

Goblin and witch, I dream, have mingled here 
The venom of their blood, 

Nightly communing when that flower of fear 
Had broken not the bud. 

But, lich or lemur, none remained to note 
The pollen falling chill, 

A film on rock or pool, each yellow mote 
Pregnant with hate and ill. 

None other bent to watch, within that crypt, 
The bitter fountain foam, 

Nor knew, beyond, what violet ichor dripped 
From wall and hidden dome, 


103 


Nor why (tho none came there to fail and drown) 
The troubled water boiled, 

When touched in that dark clarity, deep down, 

A pallid hydra coiled. 

What ghoul may come to pluck that flower of doom 
No witch hath rendered clear: 

The warden of an unrevealing gloom, 

I watch and wait and fear. 

It well may be a Form of death may own 
The twilight for a pall; 

Till then I haunt the caverned air alone, 

With quiet under all. 


) 


104. 


THE DEATH OF CIRCE 


Plotting by night her death, 

The god rechanted that Aeaean rune. 

Till men beheld a vapor dim the moon 
With grey, demoniac breath. 

When charm and rune were whole. 

He brought that golden one a golden flagon, 
Made in the image of a writhing dragon, 

With teeth that clutched the bowl. 

He poured vermilion wine 
In that pale cup, to god or faun forbid, 

Knowing the witch knew not the venom hid 
In that red anodyne. 

He gave the witch, who quaffed 
And, drinking, dreamt not who had poured for her, 
Nor why the cup came redolent of myrrh, 

Nor why her leopard laughed; 


105 


Nor felt, from floor to dome, 

Her high pavilion quiver on the dark, 

Ere, with an augury too dim to mark, 

A quiet lapped her home. 

In all her magic craft 
There lay no power to warn her to beware 
The bitter drop from Lethe mingled there 
Within the traitor draught. 

But ere a pang of fright 
Could wake, or he be bidden to depart, 

There broke a little wound above her heart. 

From which the blood dripped bright. 

And heaven and earth grew dim. 

While round the throne there gleamed a coral flood, 
From her who knew not why the forfeit blood 
Fell lyrical for him. 


106 


BALLAD OF TWO SEAS 


“Wherefore thy woe these many years, 
O hermit by the sea? 

What is the grief the winds awake, 
And waters cry to thee?” 

“It was in piracy we sailed. 

Great galleons to strip. 

On a far day, on a far sea. 

We took her father’s ship. 

Red-sided rocked the Rey del Sur 
Whenas its deck we won. 

I slew before her eyes divine 
Her father and his son. 

There was no sin I had not sinned, 

On deep sea and ashore; 

But when I looked in those great eyes, 
Villain was I no more. 


107 


I captain claimed her as my prize, 

Tho maids in common were. 

Alone ’mid that fell company, 

I cast my lot with her. 

They put us in an open boat. 

With seven days’ food and drink; 

Then slipped those traitor topsails down 
Beyond the ocean’s brink. 

Night came, and morn, but rose no sail 
On that horizon-verge; 

I took the oars and set our prow 
Against the lessening surge. 

It was scant provender we had, 

Tho she was unaware; 

Right soon I feared, and by deceit 
I gave her all my share. 


108 


She would not speak; she scarce would 
look; 

Her pain was past my cure. 
Red-scuppered in our hells of dream 
Wallowed the Rey del Sur. 

On a far day, on a far sea, 

Our shallop southward crept; 

With aching arms and splitten lips 
I labored—and she wept. 

Dawn upon dawn, dark upon dark, 

Nor ever land nor wind! 

The nights were chill, the stars were 
keen, 

The sun swung hot and blind. 

Our drink and food long since were 
gone. . . . 

We laid us down to die. . . . 

Then came a booming of a surf, 

And palm-trees met mine eye. 


109 


I steered us through the broken reef; 

Fainting, I won to shore; 

I gazed upon her changed face. 

But she on mine no more 

Below the palms I buried her, 

Whose bale-star I had been; 

And since, by this bleak coast of snows, 
I sorrow for my sin. 

There was none other of our kind 
That had her heavenly face. 

On a far Day, by a far Sea. 

I trust to know her grace.” 


110 


THE SLAYING OF THE WITCH 


Erik the prince came back from sea, 

His galley low with spoil— 

Armor and silks and weeping slaves. 
Silver and wine and oil. 

And there was one that did not weep. 
But laughed in Erik’s face. 

And ’tween the helmsman and the mast 
Strode with a leopard’s grace. 

Her hair was darker than the night 
In which our foemen sink; 

Her limbs were whiter than the milk 
Of which our maidens drink. 

Her lips were coral-red; her eyes 
As shoaling seas were green. 

She wore cupped gold on either breast 
And one blue gem between. 


Ill 


And cross her path or say her word 
No man save Erik dared; 

But all day long men stood apart, 

And knit their brows, and stared. 

And they have made the harbor strand. 
And all have seen her charms; 

Erik has borne her to the shore 
Uplifted in his arms. 

Soon in the council-hall they stood 
Of Gudrod, sire and king, 

Who bade grey Sigurd, seer and skald. 
The prince’s valor sing. 

Long looked the skald on Erik’s face 
And face of her he led; 

Then snatched the blade from Erik’s belt 
And stabbed the captive dead. 


112 


Erik has sprung at Sigurd’s throat, 

But four lords hold him fast, 

With eyes that glare on nothingness, 
And straining arms upcast. 

There is hot tumult in the place, 

With clash of steel and word. 

Until in thunder over all 

The king’s deep voice is heard. 

“Assoil thee, skald! and give good cause 
For this that thou hast done, 

Or ravens for thy sightless eyes 
Shall fight ere set of sun!” 

The skald stood silent and apart. 

Then smiled upon his deed. 

“It is that we bleed not,” he said, 
“That she in time does bleed. 


113 


From isles of sin that one was brought. 
Far westward and to-south; 

She whispered in a witch’s tongue 
And has a harlot’s mouth. 

O Gudrod! in thy grandsire’s time 
Such one across the sill 
Was led into the royal house 
To love, and plot her will. 

Thou hast heard sung what strong one’s 
death 

Her cunning did devise, 

With sorcery of philtred glance,— 

With promise of her eyes. 

Thou hast heard sung the woes she wrought 
With swords of jealous men: 

Know now that in this serpent slain 
That poison came again! 


114 


I have done well by thee and thine— 
Thy daughters, lords and son; 

And many hearts shall go unpierced, 
For that I pierced this one.” 

He made an end, and stood aloof. . . . 

The great king bent his head. . . . 
Then, gazing long on him that slew, 
“Thou hast done well,” he said. 

But from the sorceress the blood 
Crept slowly on the stone. 

And pointed like a scarlet arm 
At Gudrod on his throne. 


115 


TO TWILIGHT 


Linger, we pray, 

Shy mother of the white and earliest star! 

For in thy keeping are 

The Dreams that suffer not the light of day— 
Dim presences, that find us from afar. 

O soundless feet, 

Between the night and sunset hesitant! 

The cricket’s eager chant 
And voice of some faint bell, remotely sweet. 
Alone await thee, clear and consonant. 

Sing to thyself 

A song as pure, as low, as delicate. 

Ere music seem too late, 

Or yet the moonray seek the hidden elf. 

Or mute, the night fall uncompassionate. 


116 


We shall not hear; 

But in the heart an echo swiftly flown 
Shall touch us from thine own, 

And voices of the past, forlorn and clear, 
Shall haunt us from the days that love has 
known. . . . 

So hast thou come, 

Whose benediction ceases not for night, 

To close the gates of light, 

And tell, from fields for thee a moment dumb, 
That age-old pain of Beauty and her flight. 


117 


BEYOND THE BREAKERS 


TO JAMES HOPPER 

The world was full of the sound of a great wind 
out of the West, 

And the tracks of its feet were white on the 
trampled ocean’s breast. 

And I said, “With the sea and wind I will mix 
my body and soul, 

Where the breath of the planet drives and the 
herded billows roll.” 

And down through the pines I went, to the shore- 
sands warm and white. 

Till I saw from the ocean’s verge the gulls in 
clamorous flight,— 

Till the wind was sharp in my face, and pure and 
strong in its sweep 

From the smokeless dome of the world and a thous¬ 
and leagues of the deep. 

The breakers rose before me where the hard, wet 
sands were grey— 


118 


Each in its colored robe, fronting the new-born 
day; 

The singing waves of the sea, clean beyond all of 
clean. 

Beautiful, swift, alive, undulant, apple-green. 

Who shall grapple with lions or wrestle with 
seraphim ? 

Even so can the surf come forth in its power to 
him— 

Legion crying to legion, hurled to the steadfast 
shore; 

Rampart answering rampart, where the flame¬ 
shaped summits roar. 

And I flung me forth at their strength, at their 
might of motion and sound, 

Till the foam-bolts stung my brow and the foam- 
chains ringed me around, 

And the hissing ridges ran like dragons driven by 
gods— 

Mad with the battle-cries and their unseen lashes 
and rods. 


119 


From fighting nostrils to feet the ocean clad me in 
cold, 

Tingling, thrilling and sweet, a raiment none could 
behold, 

As I rose with urging of arms to the shattered 
foam-crests’ rain, 

To look far over the deep and sink from the wind 
again. 

O hills of voices and snows, O valleys of sapphire 
and calm. 

That smote and wrenched and released to moments 
of respite and balm! 

Splendid, young and eternal, from bridals of wind 
and sea, 

Tho I sleep at last in your vaults, yet first ye shall 
war with me! 

Furious, swift, they came, the pulse and surge of 
the deep. 

Rank on rank in their beauty, poised for the shore¬ 
ward leap, 

Lifting my form in crystal to gaze out over the 
West,— 


120 


Clutching in sudden wrath at limbs and loins and 
breast. 

Then was it as tho companions, godlike, alert, un¬ 
seen. 

Swam under and at my sides, with sight unerring 
and keen. 

Touching, splashing and laughing (and I hear their 
laughter still). 

Where the foam shot sudden veils in the waters 
torn and chill. 

And I shouted to them in kinship, in ocean ardor 
and love. 

Lifting an arm to the sun and the azure far 
above,— 

Mixing my voice with theirs and the sea-wind’s 
lordly song,— 

Feeling them stir about me, the swimmers happy 
and strong. 

Felt I not with them, the invisible at mirth, 

The wind and wonder of life, the thrill and union 
of earth?— 


121 


More intimate, more sure, for the sea’s high loneli¬ 
ness, 

Than the blinded sages dream, or the land-bound 
people guess. 

The great embrace of ocean was closer than love’s 
can be; 

Its clasp was sharp on my limbs, yet went I supple 
and free. 

The breast of the deep unheaved as a mother’s un¬ 
der a child— 

Terrible, tender, strong, imperial, undefiled. 

So for a space I lived with life intense and aware, 

Far from the human swarm and mortal folly and 
care— 

I, the foam of earth, assoiled by the ocean-foam, 

I, the homeless of worlds, forgetting the dream of 
Home. 

Yet in the end it was earth that called me in from 
the vast. 

Till the salt, wild waters boiled and the spray 
was thin on the blast, 

122 


And the undertow swept out, laughing at strength 
like mine, 

Till I rode to shore on a wave that stung with its 
hurtled brine. 

Carmel, California. 


123 


THE SWIMMERS 


We were eight fishers of the western sea, 

Who sailed our craft beside a barren land, 
Where harsh with pines the herdless mountains 
stand 

And lonely beaches be. 

There no man dwells, and ships go seldom past; 
Yet sometimes there we lift our keels ashore. 
To rest in safety ’mid the broken roar 
And mist of surges vast. 

One strand we know, remote from all the rest. 
For north and south the cliffs are high and steep. 
Whose naked leagues of rock repel the deep, 
Insurgent from the west. 

Tawny it lies, untrodden e’er by man, 

Save when from storm we sought its narrow rift, 
To beach our craft and light a fire of drift. 
And sleep till day began. 


124 


Along its sands no flower nor bird has home. 
Abrupt its breast, girt by no splendor save 
The whorled and poising emerald of the wave 
And scarves of rustling foam— 

A place of solemn beauty; yet we swore, 

By all the ocean stars’ unhasting flight, 

To seek no refuge for another night 
Upon that haunted shore. 

That year a somber autumn held the earth. 

At dawn we sailed from out our village bay; 
We sang; a taut wind leapt along the day; 

The sea-birds mocked our mirth. 

Southwest we flew, like arrows to a mark; 

Ere set of sun the coast was far to lee, 
Where thundered over by the white-hooved sea 
The reefs lie gaunt and dark. 


125 


But when we would have cast our hooks, the main 
Grew wroth a-sudden, and our captains said: 
‘‘Seek we a shelter.” And the west was red; 
God gave his winds the rein. 

And eastward lay the sands of which I told; 
Thither we fled, and on the narrow beach 
Drew up our keels beyond the lessening reach 
Of waters green and cold. 

Then set the wounded sun. The wind blew clean 
The skies. A wincing star came forth at last. 
We heard like mighty tollings on the blast 
The shock of waves unseen. 

The wide-winged Eagle hovered overhead; 

The Scorpion crept slowly in the south 
To pits below the horizon; in its mouth 
Lay a young moon that bled. 


126 


And from our fire the ravished flame swept back. 
Like yellow hair of one who flies apace. 
Compelled in lands barbarian to race 
With lions on her track. 

Then from the maelstroms of the surf arose 
Wild laughter, mystical, and up the sands 
Came Two that walked with intertwining hands 
Amid those ocean snows. 

Ghostly they shone before the lofty spray— 
Fairer than gods and naked as the moon. 

The foamy fillets at their ankles strewn 
Less marble-white than they. 

Laughing they stood, then to our beacon’s flare 
Drew nearer, as we watched in mad surprise 
The scarlet-flashing lips, the sea-green eyes, 
The red and tangled hair. 


127 


Then spoke the god (goddess and god they 
seemed), 

In harplike accents of a tongue unknown— 
About his brows the dripping locks were blown; 
Like wannest gold he gleamed. 

Staring we sat; again the Vision spoke. 

Beyond his form we saw the billows rave,— 
The leap of those white leopards in the wave,— 
The spume of seas that broke. 

Yet sat we mute, for then a human word 

Seemed folly’s worst. And scorn began to trace 
Its presence on the wild, imperious face; 

Again the red lips stirred, 

But spoke not. In an instant we were free 

From that enchantment: fleet as deer they 
turned. 

And sudden amber leapt the sands they spurned. 
We saw them meet the sea. 


128 


We heard the seven-chorded surf, unquelled, 

Call in one thunder to the granite walls; 

But over all, like broken clarion-calls. 
Disdainful laughter welled. 

Then silence, save for cloven wave and wind. 

Our fire had faltered on its little dune. 

Far out a fog-wall reared, and hid the moon. 
The night lay vast and blind. 


Silent, we waited the assuring morn, 

Which rose on angered waters. But we set 
Our hooded prows to sea, and, tempest-wet, 
Beat up the coast forlorn. 

And no man scorned our tale, for well they knew 
Had mystery befallen: in our eyes 
Were alien terrors and unknown surmise. 

Men saw the tale was true. 


129 


And no man seeks a refuge on that shore, 
Tho tempests gather in impelling skies; 
Unseen, unsolved, unhazarded it lies. 
Forsaken evermore. 

For on those sands immaculate and lone, 
Perchance They list the sea’s eternal lyre, 
When sunset casts an evanescent fire 

Through billows thunder-sown. 


130 


DUANDON 


Duandon, king of Aetria’s farthest bound 
And lord of isles the sea is loud around. 

Beheld the crimson fountains of the dawn 
Bear up the lark, a foam of song, till drawn 
By some new sorrow in the ocean’s tone. 

Thither he fared, expectant and alone. 

Thither he fared, fresh from the sea of sleep, 

And all the balmy land was blossomed deep. 

Nor could one wander save on helpless flow’rs, 
Where Summer made a garland of the hours 
And bound it on the dew-dipt brow of Morn, 

Bent low above the meadow’s blossom-bourn. 

But past all peace of bowers rang the call 
And invocation of the billows’ fall, 

And, clean from kingdoms of the sapphire vast, 
The winds of ocean smote his brow at last. 

Afar he saw the eddying petrel sweep 

O’er reefs where hoarser roared the thwarted deep, 

And soon before his eyes, exultant, fain. 

Heavy with azure gleamed the investing main. 
And quick with pulsings of a distant storm, 


181 


Strong as that music floating Troy to form. 
Splendid the everlasting ocean shone 
As God’s blue robe upon a desert thrown; 
Landward he saw the sea-born breakers fare. 
Young as a wind and ancient as the air; 
August he saw the unending ranks uproll, 
With joy and wonder mastering the soul. 
With marvel on the hearing and the sight— 
Green fires, and billows tremulous with light, 
With shaken soul of light and shuddering blaze 
Of leaping emerald and cold chrysoprase,— 
The surge and suspiration of the sea. 

Great waters choral of eternity,— 

The mighty dirge that will not cease for day 
Nor all the stars’ invincible array,— 

The thunder that has set, since Time began. 
Its sorrow in the lonely heart of man. 

Long stood the king before that wide review. 
Divining, deep beyond its sound and hue. 
Unfathomable mystery and dream,— 

Rapture and woe illusive but supreme; 

And as the pine against the sea-wind sighs. 


132 


So thrilled his breast with whispers and surmise; 
Till, on a beach that only he might roam, 

The sea, from broadest tapestries of foam, 

From mighty looms immaculate and cold, 

A scarlet shell before his feet uprolled. 

Wet as with blood against the dawn it flamed, 
Deep-whorled and irised, lustrous and unnamed— 
A jewel of the sea that burned and shone 
Like some king-ruby ravished from a throne. 

And long Duandon wandered, all-amazed. 

And long upon the shell’s wild beauty gazed. 
Until, remembering, swiftly to his ear 
He held it, eager as a child to hear 
That echo like the murmuring of seas— 

Astray forever on a mournful breeze 
And borne from some remote, nocturnal bound; 
Whereat a voice, in sorceries of sound 
To which the grace of vanished lyres had clung, 
Sang from the shell as never voice had sung: 

Far down, where virgin silence reigns, 

In jasper evenings of the sea, 

I toss my pearls, I wait for thee. 


133 


The sea has lent me all its stains: 

It is but treasure-house of me. 

The corals of the deep have caught 
A Titan shell whose fragile dome 
Is crimson o’er mine ocean home — 
Mine opal chambers subtly wrought 
In semblance of the shaken foam. 

Oh, come! and thou slialt dream with me. 
By violet foam at twilight tossed 
On strands of ocean islets lost 
To prows that seek them wearily, 

O’er seas by questing sunsets crossed. 

All dreams that Hope has promised Love, 
All beauty thou hast sought in vain. 
All joy held once and lost again. 
Those, and the mystery thereof, 

I guard beneath the sundering main. 

So rang that crystal cry, as from afar. 

Clear as the voice of Heaven’s whitest star. 


134 


And strong Duandon pondered, with his gaze 
Set like twin stars above those azure ways. 

Keener his heart, a plummet, yearned to sound 
The gulf that held his soul amazed and bound, 
Where, darker for the sky’s unclouded dome, 

The waves took sudden coronals of foam, 

Till half he deemed he saw, far out, the white 
Flung arms and bosom of the ocean-sprite. 

Flour beyond hour, until the sun was fled, 

Strode he on sands that none but him might tread; 
Hour beyond hour one sight his vision drank— 

A foam-white arm that beckoned once, and sank. 
Then, wave to wave in deeper anthems roared, 
And realm by realm the belted sunset soared, 

As tho a city of the Titans burned 
In lands below the sea-line, undiscerned; 

Till desolation touched it, zone by zone, 

Its splendors gone, like jewels turned to stone. 
And sad with evening sang the ocean-choirs, 
Domed by stars’ imperishable fires. 

But still Duandon lingered on the sands 
And clasped the shell with indecisive hands; 


135 


Ghostly it gleamed, nor music would outpour 
Save of the sea on some disastrous shore. 
And still he stood, and listened but to hark 
The surf, like dragons battling in the dark; 
Implacable they ravened, ere the moon, 

A towering glory on the eastern dune, 

A frozen splendor on the seething strand, 

In silver webs had snared the sea and land. 
Then, as on hostile waves her arrows leapt, 
Dhandon turned him from the sea, and slept. 
Slept, but the morning found him yet again 
A lonely searcher of the lonelier main; 

And night by night, and day by barren day, 
Silent he stood before the waves’ array— 

The victim of an unrelenting strife 
Of joy with death, of love with love of life. 
Ever at dawn the voice from out the shell 
Renewed within his heart the siren’s spell; 
Ever the wild, enchanting melody 
Rang as the sun was wedded to the sea. 

And still the royal pageant of the world 
Before his doom-bewildered eyes unfurled. 


136 


With dusky stain of sunsets northward drawn 
And cloudy headlands of the coasts of dawn. 
Beyond that realm of jade and jade-bound bays, 
He saw the sapphire fields of ocean blaze; 

Heard the allegiant waters chant their rune 
Before the turquoise battlements of noon, 

Where evening armies of the mist would roam 
As twilight mixed its purple with the foam,— 
Where sunlight, checked in its torrential leap, 
Would froth at dawn about some cloudland steep. 
Debarred was peace, tho Sleep, with tender hand, 
Led him awhile in her allaying land; 

For soon the sea flowed in upon his dream, 

And far below he saw the Singer gleam— 

Her floating hair and pearly body’s grace, 

With sunken moonlight pure upon her face. 

So still he yearned, on whom her spell was laid, 
And ever sunset, like a golden blade, 

Cut day by day from life, and ever he 
Heard like the voice of Death the lordly sea, 
Chanting, enthroned on choric reef and bars. 

Its midnight song below the western stars. 


137 


And all the stars seemed ministrant to doom 
As high Orion trod his arc of gloom. 

Broke then a morning when the weary sea 
Lay hushed above its halls of mystery; 
Besieging fog hung mute on shore and vale, 
With pallid banners and with ashen mail. 

And ocean, grey as with oblivion, 

Lay hidden from the visage of the sun. 

High noon drove not the phantom army forth, 
Nor winds slow-seeping from the muffled North, 
And weary with its vigil of the deep, 

Duandon’s soul put out on seas of sleep; 
Dreamless he lay ere sunset, and the shell, 
Unguarded, from assenting fingers fell. 

Came then, nor spilt that anodyne of rest, 

His only son, impatient with the quest, 
New-fared from crimson victories of war,— 
Tall as the spears that lesser champions bore. 
To him the horizon was a smitten chord 
That rang in challenge to his youthful sword, 
And thrilled with all the murmurs of romance 
The realms remote from his insatiate lance. 


138 


Silent awhile he stood, and ere he spoke. 
Routed at last, the sea-mist’s army broke, 

And, as its ranks fled landward to their knell, 
The consummating sunset smote the shell. . . 

Duandon woke below the evening star. 

And saw the foam’s incessant scimetar 
Flash from the billow’s sheath, and heard the 
Of winds released upon the western sky; 
Forlorn beyond the darkling waters lay 
The sullen embers of the pyre of Day— 

Dull, ere obscuring night should make the sea 
One with the reaches of infinity; 

Then to the sands his gaze returned, to meet 
The seaward print of unreturning feet. 

Gone was the shell; a sword lay in its stead, 
From altars of the buried sun made red— 

A blade he knew so well from all the rest 
It seemed that instant to transfix his breast. 
Afar or near, on waters grey and lone. 

No swimmer swept, no arm uplifted shone; 
Austere and vacant rolled the cryptic main, 
Unsearchable: the prince came not again, 


139 


Unseen on tawny beach or waters loud,— 

Gone like the shadow of a vanished cloud. 

Aye! better vanished, than to wait, as he, 
Duandon, silent by the unmastered sea. 

From which, till death, his heart was doomed to 
crave 

The uncomprehended tidings of the wave— 

An echo of that music from the shell 
Forever vibrant in its fall and swell— 

Was fated, still, from azure gulfs to dream 
He saw the arm of some white swimmer gleam, 
Flung for an instant from the shifting spray— 
Siren, or son, or both, he could not say. 

And feelest thou no pangs of beauty lost, 

When morning waves or waters sunset-crost 
Cry to thy soul, unsatisfied, alone. 

Of Isles to which its younger dreams have flown? 
The might-have-been, the nevermore-to-be. 

Bears not the deep their antiphon to thee? 

For man has found, as man shall ever find, 

Some echo of his travail on the wind. 


140 


And sigli of great Departures, and the breath 
Of pinions incontestable by Death. 

Of stars and shadows past to-morrow’s ken 
He finds him vision and announcement, when, 

As storms beyond the horizon-line prolong 
The sea’s imperious, eternal song, 

The thunder-chorded surf on yellow sands 
Resounds, like harps on which the gods lay hands. 


141 


THREE SONNETS OF THE NIGHT-SKIES 


I 

ALDEBARAN AT DUSK 

Thou art the star for which all evening waits— 
O star of peace, come tenderly and soon, 

Nor heed the drowsy and enchanted moon, 

Who dreams in silver at the eastern gates 
Ere yet she brim with light the blue estates 
Abandoned by the eagles of the noon. 

But shine thou swiftly on the darkling dune 
And woodlands where the twilight hesitates. 

Above that wide and ruby lake to-West, 

Wherein the sunset waits reluctantly, 

Stir silently the purple wings of Night. 

She stands afar, upholding to her breast, 

As mighty murmurs reach her from the sea. 

Thy lone and everlasting rose of light. 


142 


II 


THE CHARIOTS OF DAWN 

O Night! is this indeed the morning-star, 

That now with brandished and impatient beam 
On eastern heights of darkness flames supreme, 
Or some great captain of the dawn, whose car 
Scornful of all thy rear-guard ranks that bar 
His battle, now foreruns the helms that gleam 
Below horizons of dissevering dream, 

His javelin lifted to his hosts afar? 

Now am I minded of some ocean-king 

That in a war of gods has wielded arms, 

And still in slumber hears their harness ring 

And dreams of isles where golden altars 
fume. 

Till, mad for irretrievable alarms, 

He passes down the seas to some strange 
doom. 


143 


Ill 


THE HUNTRESS OF STARS 

Tell me, O Night! what horses hale the moon! 
Those of the sun rear now on Syria’s day, 

But here the steeds of Artemis delay 
At heavenly rivers hidden from the noon. 

Or quench their starry thirst at cisterns hewn 
In midnight’s deepest sapphire, ere she slay 
The Bull, and hide the Pleiades’ dismay, 

Or drown Orion in a silver swoon. 

Are those the stars, and not their furious eyes, 
That now before her coming chariot glare? 

Is that their nebulous, phantasmal breath 
Trailed like a mist upon the winter skies. 

Or vapors from a Titan’s pyre of death— 
Far-wafted on the orbit of Altair? 


144 


THEEE SONNETS ON OBLIVION 


I 

OBLIVION 

Her eyes have seen the monoliths of kings 
Upcast like foam of the effacing tide; 

She has beheld the desert stars deride 
The monuments of Power’s imaginings. 

About their base the wind Assyrian flings 

The dust that throned the satrap in his pride; 
Cambyses and the Memphian pomps abide 
As in the flame the moth’s presumptuous wings. 

There gleams no glory that her hand shall spare. 
Nor any sun whose rays shall cross her night, 
Whose realm enfolds man’s empire and its 
end. 

No armor of renown her sword shall dare, 

No council of the gods withstand her might: 
Stricken at last Time’s lonely Titans bend. 


145 


II 


THE DUST DETHRONED 

Sargon is dust, Semiramis a clod! 

In crypts profaned the moon at midnight peers; 
The owl upon the Sphinx hoots in her ears, 
And scant and sere the desert grasses nod 
Where once the armies of Assyria trod, 

With younger sunlight splendid on the spears; 
The lichens cling the closer with the years, 
And seal the eyelids of the weary god. 

Where high the tombs of royal Egypt heave, 

The vulture shadows with arrested wings 
The indecipherable boasts of kings, 

As Arab children hear their mother’s cry 
And leave in mockery their toy—they leave 
The skull of Pharaoh staring at the sky. 

Ill 

THE NIGHT OF GODS 

Their mouths have drunken Death’s eternal wine— 
The draught that Baal in oblivion sips. 

146 


Unseen about their courts the adder slips, 
Unheard the sucklings of the leopard whine; 

The toad has found a resting-place divine, 

And bloats in stupor between Ammon’s lips. 
O Carthage and the unreturning ships, 

The fallen pinnacle, the shifting Sign! 

Lo! when I hear from voiceless court and fane 
Time’s adoration of Eternity— 

The cry of kingdoms past and gods undone— 
I stand as one whose feet at noontide gain 
A lonely shore; who feels his soul set free, 

And hears the blind sea chanting to the sun. 


147 


THE SKULL OF SHAKESPEARE 


I 

Without how small, within how strangely vast! 
What stars of terror had their path in thee! 
What music of the heavens and the sea 
Lived in a sigh or thundered on the blast! 

Here swept the gleam and pageant of the Past, 
As Beauty trembled to her fate’s decree; 

Here swords were forged for armies yet to be. 
And tears were found too dreadful not to last. 

Here stood the seats of judgment and its light. 
To whose assizes all our dreams were led— 

Our best and worst, our Paradise and Hell; 
And in this room delivered now to night. 

The mortal put its question to the dead, 

And worlds were weighed, and God’s deep 
shadow fell. 

II 

Here an immortal river had its rise, 

Tho dusty now the fountain whence it ran 
148 


So swift and beautiful with good to man. 

Here the foundation of an empire lies— 

The ruins of a realm seen not with eyes, 

That now the vision of a gnat could scan. 

Here wars were fought within a little span, 
Whose echoes yet resound on human skies. 

Life, on her rainbow road from dust to dust, 

Spilt here her wildest iris, still thine own. 
Master, and with thy soul and ashes one! 

Thy wings are distant from our years of lust, 
Yet he who liveth not by biead alone 
Shall see thee as that angel in the sun. 


140 


THE SETTING OF ANTARES 


The skies are clear, the summer night is old. 

The foamless ocean reaches to the West, 

With troubled moonlight on its tranquil breast, 
Weary of grief eternally retold. 

Now is that hour when winds and waters hold 
A truce of silence and inducing rest, 

And now, like ocean-eagles to their nest, 

The stars go seaward, silvery and cold. 

Antares, heart of blood, how stir your wings 
Above the sea’s mysterious murmurings! 

The road of death leads outward to your light, 
And you are symbol for a time of him 
Whose fated star, companionless and dim, 
Sinks to the wide horizon of the Night. 


150 


INFIDELS 


Cold and eternal stare his eyes of stone. 

As now, adored across the templed gloom, 

The graven god exalts his granite room. 
Implacably his acolytes intone: 

The smitten gong makes answer in a groan; 
Slowly the azures of the worship fume, 
Phantoms awhile of that enduring tomb, 

And “Life is evil !** now the bonzes drone. 

Without, a darkness passionate with breath 
Of unseen flowers—a fragrance at the shrine 
Of two that lie incredulous of death. 

The grass is cool beneath her, and the night 
Holds, as a rose her immaterial wine. 

The moan and murmur of the old delight. 


151 


OMNIA EXEUNT IN MYSTERIUM” 


I 

The stranger in my gates—lo! that am I, 

And what my land of birth I do not know, 
v Nor yet the hidden land to which I go. 

One may be lord of many ere he die. 

And tell of many sorrows in one sigh. 

But know himself he shall not, nor his woe, 

Nor to what sea the tears of wisdom flow, 

^ Nor why one star is taken from the sky. 

An urging is upon him evermore. 

And tho he bide, his soul is wanderer. 

Scanning the shadows with a sense of haste. 

Where fade the tracks of all who went before— 
A dim and solitary traveller 
^ On ways that end in evening and the waste. 

II 

How dumb the vanished billions who have died! 
With backward gaze conjectural we wait. 

And ere the invading Shadow penetrate, 

152 



The echo from a mighty heart that cried 
Is made a sole memorial to pride. 

From out that night’s inscrutable estate, 

A few cold voices wander, desolate 
With all that love has lost or grief has sighed. 

Slaves, seamen, captains, councillors and kings, 
Gone utterly, save for those echoes far! 

As they before, I tread a forfeit land, 
Till the supreme and ancient silence flings 
Its pall between the dreamer and the star. 
O desert wide! O little grain of sand! 


153 



SONNETS BY THE NIGHT SEA 


I 

Surely the dome of unremembered nights 

Was heavy with those stars! The peaceless 
sea, 

Casting in foam their fallen shafts to me, 
Makes ancient music to their awful heights. 

O quenchless and insuperable lights! 

What life shall meet your gaze and thence go 
free 

From litten midnights of eternity 
To havens open to your final flights? 

Abides nor goal nor ultimate of peace. 

Nor lifts a beacon on the cosmic deep 

To guide our wandering world on seas 
sublime. 

Nor any night to grant the soul release, 

Swung as a pendulum from life to sleep. 

From sleep to life, from Timelessness to 
Time. 


154 


II 


Now, as I hear upon the caverned night 
The ocean’s ceaseless and stupendous dirge. 

And one by one the stars approach its verge, 
The deep seems all one prayer, and the light 
Of farthest suns but questions for the sight 
Of men who yet may test the Dark, to urge 
Life’s portent from the starlight and the surge, 
And read the ancient Mystery aright. 

Do blinded powers from their darkness seek, 
Through human sight, that secret to attain? 
From fonts how distant is the spirit fed? 

And who are we? And is it we who speak 
The Why we utter to the night of pain, 

The Whither to the unresponding dead? 

Ill 

You seem so inexhaustible, O sea! 

And infinite of nature; yet I know 
That by divine permission could we go 
Within your sealed and silent deeps, and be 


155 


Of all your glooms and treasuries made free. 

The soul at last each marvel would outgrow. 
Till each were vain as festal fires that glow 
Beneath the stars’ immortal scrutiny. 

And were all alien worlds and suns laid bare 
Till Mystery their secret should declare, 

The finite soon its utmost would impart. 

And sun nor world at last have power to thrill 
Man’s wayward and insatiable heart, 

Which God and all His truth alone can fill. 

IV 

The wind of night is like an ocean’s ghost. 

The deep is greatly troubled. I, alone, 

See the wave shattered and the wave-crest 
thrown 

Where pine and cypress hold their ancient post. 
The sounds of war, the trampling of a host. 

Over the borders of the world are blown; 

The feet of armies deathless and unknown 
Halt, baffled, at the ramparts of the coast. 


156 


Yea! and the Deep is troubled! In this heart 
Are voices of a far and shadowy Sea, 

Above whose wastes no lamp of earth shall 
gleam. 

Farewells are spoken and the ships depart 
For that horizon and its mystery. 

Whose stars tell not if life, or death, is 
dream. 

V 

The wind of night is mighty on the deep— 

A presence haunting sea and land again. 

That wind upon the watery waste has been; 
That wind upon the desert soon shall sweep. 

O vast and mournful spirit, wherefore keep 
Your vigil at the fleeting homes of men, 

Who need no voice of yours to tell them when 
Is come the hour to labor or to sleep? 

From waste to waste you wander, and are dumb 
Before the morning. Patient in her tree 

The bird awaits until your strength hath 
passed, 

157 


Forgetting darkness when the day is come. 
With other tidings have you burdened me, 
Whom desolations harbor at the last. 


158 


THE BLACK VULTURE 


Aloof within the day’s enormous d«ome, 

He holds unshared the silence of the sky. 

Far down his bleak, relentless eyes descry 
The eagle’s empire and the falcon’s home— 

Far down, the galleons of sunset roam; 

His hazards on the sea of morning lie; 

Serene, he hears the broken tempest sigh S 
Where cold sierras gleam like scattered foam. 

And least of all he holds the human swarm— 
Unwitting now that envious men prepare 

To make their dream and its fulfilment one, 
When, poised above the caldrons of the storm, 

Their hearts, contemptuous of death, shall dare V 
His roads between the thunder and the sun. 


159 


IN EXTREMIS 


Till dawn the Winds’ insuperable throng 
Passed over like archangels in their might, 
With roar of chariots from their stormy height, 
And broken thunder of mysterious song— 

By mariner or sentry heard along 

The visionary battlements of night— 

And wafture of immeasurable flight. 

And high-blown trumpets mutinous and strong. 

Till louder on the dreadful dark I heard 
The shrieking of the tempest-tortured tree. 

And deeper on immensity the call 
And tumult of the empire-forging sea; 

But near the eternal Peace I lay, nor stirred. 
Knowing the happy dead hear not at all. 



1(50 


A MOOD 


I am grown weary of permitted things 
And weary of the care-emburdened age— 

Of any dusty lore of priest and sage 
To which no memory of Arcadia clings; 

For subtly in my blood at evening sings 
A madness of the faun—a choric rage 
That makes all earth and sky seem but a cage 
In which the spirit pines with cheated wings. 

Rather by dusk for Lilith would I wait 

And for a moment’s rapture welcome death. 
Knowing that I had baffled Time and Fate, 

And feeling on my lips, that died with day 
As sense and soul were ga thered to ajbreath , } 
The immortal, deadly lips that kissing slay. 


161 



OCEAN SUNSETS 


I 

Men watch the wide magnificence uprolled, 

A deathless surf of glory down the zones— 
Ancient as that with which the deep intones 
Its undelivered sorrow. Fold on fold 
The foam of splendor deepens, far and cold, 
Below the stars’ imaginary thrones, 

Till on the twilight of those sapphire stones 
Are ashes of the sun-deserted gold. 

Along the mighty rondure of the world 
Forever and forever sweeps that wave. 

From Arctic mountains to the southern floe 
In soundlessness on purple islands hurled. 

With opalescent wash of hues that lave 
Old summits, sacred in that afterglow. 

II 

How often, from the bleak sierra’s crest, 

The northern headland, the deserted shore, 
Have eyes beheld that crimson billow soar, 

162 


To sink on Edens deeper in the West! 

How often, on some fatal ocean-quest, 

That light has gleamed upon the lifted oar— 
Cast from that Golden House whose closing 
door 

Is still the evading goal of our unrest. 

Oh! far in time and far on alien seas 

Its path has been the heroes’ path of light, 
Down which the galley, goddess-lured, was 
drawn. 

Wildly that radiance was cast on these, 

Till the red prow drove westward in the night, 
Followed by slow Arcturus and the dawn. 

Ill 

Roll on, tremendous surf, till the last eyes 
For the last time behold thy glory flame! 

Then, in the sea of darkness whence they came 

Resolve thy splendor and reverting dyes! 

Thy forfeit hues shall fade on somber skies, 

When, in a breath, man’s grandeur and his 
shame 
163 


Pass to the silences that have no name. 
Where dreams are never and the night denies. 

Thy marvel is of man and not of thee, 

And he being not, no longer thou shalt be. 
Parent and worshipper of loveliness. 

He walks a realm forbidden to the brute— 
An alchemist whose spirit can transmute 
Color and form to beauty’s pure excess. 


164 


THE IRIS HILLS 

FROM “ROSAMUND” 

Up to the hills of iris we two went yearning. 

O youth and youth’s heart burning! 

O winds of Spring! 

Far on the hills of iris two lay forgetful. 

O rapture unregretful! 

O fire of Spring! 

Down from the hills of iris we wandered slowly. 
O lilies crushed and lowly! 

O tears of Spring! 


165 


ODE ON THE CENTENARY OF THE 
BIRTH OF ROBERT BROWNING 


As unto lighter strains a boy might turn 
FVom where great altars burn 
And Music’s grave archangels tread the night. 
So I, in seasons past. 

Loved not the bitter might 
And merciless control 
Of thy bleak trumpets calling to the soul. 

Their consummating blast 
Held inspirations of affright, 

As when a faun 
Hears mournful thunders roll 
On breathless, wide transparencies of dawn. 

Nor would I hear 
With thee, superb and clear 
The indomitable laughter of the race; 

Nor would I face 

Clean Truth, with her cold agates of the well, 

Nor with thee trace 

Her footprints passing upward to the snows, 

But sought a phantom rose 


166 


And islands where the ghostly siren sings; 

Nor would I dwell 
Where star-forsaking wings 
On mortal thresholds hide their mystery. 

Nor watch with thee 

The light of Heaven cast on common things. 

But now in dreams of day I see thee stand 
A grey, great sentry on the encompassed wall 
That fronts the Night fo-rever, in thy hand 
A consecrated spear 

To test the dragons of man’s ancient fear 
From secret gulfs that crawl— 

A captain of that choral band 
Whose reverend faces, anxious of the Dark, 
Yet undismayed 

By rain of ruined worlds against the night. 
Turned evermore to hark 
The music of God’s silence, and were stayed 
By something other than the reason’s light. 
And I have seen thee as 
An eagle, strong to pass 
Where tempest-shapen clouds go to and fro 


167 


And winds and noons have birth. 

But whose regard is on the lands below 
And wingless things of earth. 

And yet not thine for long 
The feigned passion of the nightingale 
Nor shards of haliotis, nor the song 
Of cymballed fountains hidden in the dale, 

Nor gardens where the feet of Fragrance steal: 

’Twas thine the laying-on to feel 
Of tragic hands imperious and cold, 

That, grasping, led thee from the dreams of old, 
Making thee voyager 
Of seas within the cosmic solitude, 

Whose moons the long-familiar stars occlude,— 
Whose living sunsets stir 
With visions of the timelessness we crave. 

And thou didst ride a wave 
That gathered solemn music to its breast, 

And breaking, shook our strand with thought’s un¬ 
rest, 

Till men far inland heard its mighty call 
Where the young mornings leap the world’s blue 
wall. 


168 


Nature has lonely voices at her heart 

And some thou heardst, for at thine own 
Were chords beyond all Art, 

That thrill but to the eternal undertone. 

But not necessitous to thee 
The dreams that were when Arcady began 
Or Paphos soared in iris from the sea; 

For thou couldst guess 
The rainbows hidden in the frustrate slime, 
And sawst in crownless Man 
A Titan scourged through Time 
With pains and raptures of his loneliness. 

And thou wast wanderer 
In that dim House that is the human heart, 
Where thou didst roam apart. 

Seeing what pillars were 
Between its deep foundations and the sun, 
What halls of dream undone, 

What seraphs hold compassionate their wings 
Between the youth and bitterness of things, 

Ere all see clear 

The gain in loss, the triumph in the tear. 


169 


Time’s whitest loves lie radiant in thy song, 

Like starlight on an ocean, for thine own 
Was as a deathless lily grown 
In Paradise—ethereal and strong. 

And to thine eyes 

Earth had no earth that held not haughty dust, 
And seeds of future harvestings in trust. 

And hidden azures of -eventual skies. 

Yet hadst thou sharper strains, 

Even as the Power determines us with pains. 
And seeing harvests, sawst as well the chaff, 

And seeing Beauty, sawst her shames no less, 
Loosing the sweet. 

High thunder of thy Jovian laugh 
On souls purblind in their self-righteousness. 

O vision wide and keen! 

Which knew, untaught, that pains to joyance are 
As night unto the star 
That on the effacing dawn must burn unseen. 

And thou didst know what meat 
Was torn to give us milk, 

What countless worms made possible the silk 
That robes the mind, what plan 


170 


Drew as a bubble from old infamies 
And fen-pools of the past 
The shy and many-colored soul of man. 

Yea! thou hast seen the lees 
In that rich cup we lift against the day, 

Seen the man-child at his disastrous play— 

His shafts without a mark. 

His fountains flowing downward to the dark. 

His maiming and his bars. 

Then turned to see 

His vatic shadow cast athwart the stars, 

And his strange challenge to infinity. 

But who am I to speak. 

Far down the mountain, of its altar-peak. 

Or cross on feeble wings. 
Adventurous, the oceans in thy mind? 

We of a wider day’s bewilderings 

For very light seem blind, 

And fearful of the gods our hands have formed. 

Some lift their eyes and seem 
To see at last the lofty human scheme 
Fading and toppling as a sunset stormed 


171 


By wind and evening, with the stars in doubt. 

And some cry, “On to Brotherhood!” And some, 
(Their Dream’s high music dumb) : 
“Nay! let us hide in roses all our chains, 

Tho all the lamps go out! 

Let us accept our lords! 

Time’s tensions move not save to subtler pains.” 
And over all the Silence is as swords. . . . 
Wherefore be near us in our day of choice, 

Lest Hell’s red choirs rejoice; 

And may our counsels be 
More wise, more kindly, for the thought of thee; 
And may our deeds attest 
Thy covenant of fame 
To men of after-years that see thy name 
Held like a flower by Honor to her breast. 

Thy station in our hearts long since was won— 
Safe from the jealous years— 

Thou of whose love, thou of whose thews and tears 
We rest most certain when the day is done 
And formless shadows close upon the sun! 

Thou wast a star ere death’s long night shut down, 
And for thy brows the crown 


172 


Was graven ere the birth-pangs, and thy bed 
Is now of hallowed marble, and a fane 
Among the mightier dead: 

More blameless than thine own what soul has 
stood ? 

Dost thou lie deaf until another Reign, 

Or hear as music o’er thy head 
The ceaseless trumpets of the war for Good? 
Ah, thou! ah, thou! 

Stills God thy question now? 


173 


THE HOUSE OF ORCHIDS 
Dedicated to Mrs. Joseph B. Coryell 

How swift a step from zone to zone! 

A moment since, the day 
Was cool with winds from linden-bowers flown 
And breath of mounded hay 
That ripens on the plains, 

Within the shadow of the western hill; 

But here the air is still. 

Warm as a Lesbian valley’s afternoon 
Made languorous with June 
And moist with spirits of unnumbered rains, 
Pervaded with a perfume that might be 
Of rainbow-haunted lands beyond the sea 
And ocean-ending sands— 

A ghost of fragrance whose elusive hands 
Touch not the hidden harp of memory. 

What sprites are those that gleam? 

Can eyes betray? 

Till now I did not deem 

That Beauty’s flaming hands could shape ir. bloom 
174 


So marvelous and delicate designs. 

The vision here that shines 
Seems not a fabric of our mortal day 
And Nature’s tireless loom, 

By custom long defiled, 

But symbol of a loveliness supreme, 

A god’s forgotten dream, 

In alabaster told by elfin skill 
In caverns underneath a haunted hill, 

Or in some palace of enchantment hewn 
From crystal in the twilights of the moon. 
Where white Astarte strays 
And Echo and the silver-footed fays 
Make alien music, fugitive and wild. 

Ye seem as flowers exiled. 

More beautiful because they die so soon; 

But who the gods that could have scorned 
Your tenderness unmarred? 

Put first ye forth your fragile wings, 

Less of the form than of the soul of things, 
Where seraphim had mourned 
In Eden’s evening, heavy-starred, 

When first the gates were barred 


175 


And cruel Time began? 

For mystery has lordship here, and ye 
Seem spirit-flowers born to startle man 
With intimations of eternity 
And hint of what the flowers of Heaven may be. 
Nor can your glamour greatly seem of earth: 

Her blossoms are of mirth, 

But ye with loveliness can tell of grief— 
Unhappy love most exquisite and brief. 

Winged ye seem and fleet. 

Such flowers pale as are 
Worn by the goddess of a distant star— 

Before whose holy eyes 
Beauty and evening meet. 

Mysterious beauty delicate and strange. 

And evening-calm that sighs 
With Music’s inexpressible surmise— 

Her question ere she dies. 

From form to form ye range. 

From hue to hue. 

And this, with petals wan and mystical. 

Seems votive to those spirits of the dew 


176 


That weep at silvern twilights silently, 

With tears that gently fall 
On hidden elves dim-curtained by the rose. 

And thou, thy chalice better glows 
In purple grottos where the stainless sea 
On sands inviolable swirls— 

On evanescent pearls. 

That hold not all thy bosom’s purity. 

And thou, more white 
Than when on some blue lake. 

Just as the zephyrs wake, 

The ripples flash to light— 

Touched by a swan’s unsullied breast to foam, 
Hadst thou in melancholy halls thy home? 

For long ago thou seemest to have slept, 

Forlorn, in palace-glooms where queens have wept. 

Ah! they too slept at last, 

Whose sighs are half the music of the Past! 

But thou, O palest one! 

Dost seem to scorn the sun, 

And, in a tropic, dense. 


177 


Languid magnificence, 

Desire to know thy former place. 

Where no man comes at night, 

And in its antic flight 
Behold the vampire-bat veer off from thee 
As from a phantom face. 

Or watch Antares’ light peer craftily 
Down from the dank and moonless sky. 

As goblins’ eyes might gleam 
Or baleful rubies glare, 

Muffled in smoke or incense-laden air. 

And thou, most weird companion, thou dost seem 
Some mottled moth of Hell, 

That stealthily might fly 
To hover there above the carnal bell 
Of some black lily, still and venomous, 

And poise forever thus. 

Chill, in thy drowsy aether warm. 

Softly thou gleamest, subtler form; 

Witch-bloom thou seem’st to be. 

For Lilith would have bound thee in her hair— 
Smiling at dusk inscrutably. 


178 


And Circe gathered such for gods to wear, 

In evenings when the moon, 

A sorceress who steals in white 
Along the cloudy parapets of night, 

In every glade her ghostly pearl has strewn. 

Thou art as violet-wan 
As eyelids of a vestal dead and meek. 

If after-life can come to blossoms gone. 
Surely Persephone 
Shall crown her brow with thee, 

In realms where burns nor star nor sun 
To show the dead what amaranths to seek. 

And ah—this other! none 
Of all thy kin more purely is arrayed— 
Pallid as Aphrodite’s cheek, 

To some long passion-swoon betrayed, 

By ecstasy foretold; 

Yet as with blood thy bosom gleams; 

Red as Adonis’ wound it seems, 

By Syria mourned of old, 

Or scarlet lips that drink from bowls of jade. 
Slowly, an ivory poison, sweet and cold. . . . 


179 


Oh! mystically strange 

That speechless things should so have power to 
hint, 

With subtle form and tint 
That seize the heart’s high memories unaware. 
The sorrow and the mystery of Change, 

And elements in Fate’s controlling plan 
Not altogether ministrant to man 
Nor mindful of his care— 

Some joy to death akin, 

Or tragic kiss, or fruit malignly fair. 

Some garden built by Sin 
For Love to wander in. 

Some face whose beauty bids the heart despair! 
And yet, O blossoms pure! 

How marvelous the lure 
Of your fragility and innocence— 

This grace and wistfulness of helpless things 
That ask no recompense! 

Ye give the spirit wings, 

For yours the beauty that is near to pain. 

And stir the heart again 
With visions of the Flowers that abide— 


180 


Ah! sweet 

As when love’s glances meet 
Across the music, heard at eventide! 


181 


A WINE OF WIZARDRY 


“When mountains were stained as with wine 
By the dawning of Time , and as wine 
Were the seas ” Ambrose Bierce. 

Without, the battlements of sunset shine, 

’Mid domes the sea-winds rear and overwhelm. 
Into a crystal cup the dusky wine 
I pour, and, musing at so rich a shrine, 

I watch the star that haunts its ruddy gloom. 

Now Fancy, empress of a purpled realm. 

Awakes with brow caressed by poppy-bloom, 

And wings in sudden dalliance her flight 
To strands where opals of the shattered light 
Gleam in the wind-strewn foam, and maidens flee 
A little past the striving billows’ reach, 

Or seek the russet mosses of the sea. 

And wrinkled shells that lure along the beach, 
And please the heart of Fancy; yet she turns, 
Tho trembling, to a grotto rosy-sparred, 

Where wattled monsters redly gape, that guard 
A cowled magician peering on the damned 


182 


Through vials in which a splendid poison burns, 
Sifting Satanic gules athwart his brow. 

So Fancy will not gaze with him, and now 
She wanders to an iceberg oriflammed 
With rayed, auroral guidons of the North— 
Where arctic elves have hidden wintry gems 
And treasuries of frozen anadems. 

Alight with timid sapphires of the snow. 

But she would dream of warmer gems, and so 
Ere long her eyes in fastnesses look forth 
O’er blue profounds mysterious whence glow 
The coals of Tartarus on the moonless air, 

As Titans plan to storm Olympus’ throne, 

’Mid pulse of dungeoned forges down the stunned, 
Undominated firmament, and glare 
Of Cyclopean furnaces unsunned. 

Then hastens she in refuge to a lone. 

Immortal garden of the eastern hours, 

Where Dawn upon a pansy’s breast has laid 
A single tear, and whence the wind has flown 
And left a silence. Far on shadowy tow’rs 
Droop blazoned banners, and the woodland shade, 


183 


With leafy flames and dyes autumnal hung, 
Makes beautiful the twilight of the year. 

For this the fays will dance, for elfin cheer, 
Within a dell where some mad girl has flung 
A bracelet that the painted lizards fear— 

Red pyres of muffled light! Yet Fancy spurns 
The revel, and to eastward hazard turns. 

And glaring beacons of the Soldan’s shores. 
When in a Syrian treasure-house she pours. 
From caskets rich and amethystine urns, 

Dull fires of dusty jewels that have bound 
The brows of naked Ashtaroth around. 

Or hushed, at fall of some disastrous night, 
When sunset, like a crimson throat to Hell, 

Is cavernous, she marks the seaward flight 
Of homing dragons dark upon the West; 

Till, drawn by tales the winds of ocean tell. 
And mute amid the splendors of her quest. 

To some red city of the Djinns she flees 
And, lost in palaces of silence, sees 
Within a porphyry crypt the murderous light 
Of garnet-crusted lamps whereunder sit 
Perturbed men that tremble at a sound. 


184 


And ponder words on ghastly vellum writ, 

In vipers’ blood, to whispers from the night— 
Infernal rubrics, sung to Satan’s might, 

Or chaunted to the Dragon in his gyre. 

But she would blot from memory the sight. 

And seeks a stained twilight of the South, 

Where crafty gnomes with scarlet eyes conspire 
To quench Aldebaran’s affronting fire. 

Low sparkling just beyond their cavern’s mouth, 
Above a wicked queen’s unhallowed tomb. 

There lichens brown, incredulous of fame. 
Whisper to veined flowers her body’s shame, 

’Mid stillness of all pageantries of bloom. 

Within, lurk orbs that graven monsters clasp; 
Red-embered rubies smolder in the gloom, 
Betrayed by lamps that nurse a sullen flame. 

And livid roots writhe in the marble’s grasp. 

As moaning airs invoke the conquered rust 
Of lordly helms made equal in the dust. 

Without, where baleful cypresses make rich 
The bleeding sun’s phantasmagoric gules. 

Are fungus-tapers of the twilight witch 
(Seen by the bat above unfathomed pools) 


185 


And tiger-lilies known to silent ghouls, 

Whose king has digged a somber carcanet 
And necklaces with fevered opals set. 

But Fancy, well affrighted at his gaze. 

Flies to a violet headland of the West, 

About whose base the sun-lashed billows blaze, 
Ending in precious foam their fatal quest, 

As far below the deep-hued ocean molds, 

With waters’ toil and polished pebbles’ fret, 

The tiny twilight in the jacinth set. 

The wintry orb the moonstone-crystal holds, 
Snapt coral twigs and winy agates wet, 
Translucencies of jasper, and the folds 
Of banded onyx, and vermilion breast 
Of cinnabar. Anear on orange sands. 

With prows of bronze the sea-stained galleys rest, 
And swarthy mariners from alien strands 
Stare at the red horizon, for their eyes 
Behold a beacon burn on evening skies. 

As fed with sanguine oils at touch of night. 

Forth from that pharos-flame a radiance flies. 

To spill in vinous gleams on ruddy decks; 


186 


And overside, when leap the startled waves 
And crimson bubbles rise from battle-wrecks, 
Unresting hydras wrought of bloody light 
Dip to the ocean’s phosphorescent caves. 

So Fancy’s carvel seeks an isle afar, 

Led by the Scorpion’s rubescent star, 

Until in templed zones she smiles to see 
Black incense glow, and scarlet-bellied snakes 
Sway to the tawny flutes of sorcery. 

There priestesses in purple robes hold each 
A sultry garnet to the sea-linkt sun, 

Or, just before the colored morning shakes 
A splendor on the ruby-sanded beach. 

Cry unto Betelgeuse a mystic word. 

But Fancy, amorous of evening, takes 

Her flight to groves whence lustrous rivers run, 

Thro hyacinth, a minister wall to gird, 

Where, in the hushed cathedral’s jeweled gloom, 
Ere Faith return, and azure censers fume, 

She kneels, in solemn quietude, to mark 
The suppliant day from gorgeous oriels float 


187 


And altar-lamps immure the deathless spark; 

Till, all her dreams made rich with fervent hues, 
She goes to watch, beside a lurid moat. 

The kingdoms of the afterglow suffuse 
A sentinel mountain stationed toward the night— 
Whose broken tombs betray their ghastly trust, 
Till bloodshot gems stare up like eyes of lust. 
And now she knows, at agate portals bright. 

How Circe and her poisons have a home, 

Carved in one ruby that a Titan lost, 

Where icy philters brim with scarlet foam, 

’Mid hiss of oils in burnished caldrons tost, 

While thickly from her prey his life-tide drips, 
In turbid dyes that tinge her torture-dome, 

As craftily she gleans her deadly dews, 

With gyving spells not Pluto’s queen can use, 

Or listens to her victim’s moan, and sips 
Her darkest wine, and smiles with wicked lips. 

Nor comes a god with any power to break 
The red alembics whence her gleaming broths 
Obscenely fume, as asp or adder froths. 

To lethal mists whose writhing vapors make 
Dim augury, till shapes of men that were 


188 


Point, weeping, at tremendous dooms to be, 
When pillared pomps and thrones supreme shall 
stir, 

Unstable as the foam-dreams of the sea. 

But Fancy still is fugitive, ahd turns 
To caverns where a demon altar burns. 

And Satan, yawning on his brazen seat, 

Fondles a screaming thing his fiends have flayed, 
Ere Lilith come his indolence to greet, 

Who leads from Hell his whitest queens, arrayed 
In chains so heated at their master’s fire 
That one new-damned had thought their bright at¬ 
tire 

Indeed were coral, till the dazzling dance 
So terribly that brilliance shall enhance. 

But Fancy is unsatisfied, and soon 
She seeks the silence of a vaster night, 

Where powers of wizardry, with faltering sight 
(Whenas the hours creep farthest from the noon) 
Seek by the glow-worm’s lantern cold and dull 
A crimson spider hidden in a skull. 

Or search for mottled vines with berries white. 


189 


Where waters mutter to the gibbous moon. 

There, clothed in cerements of malignant light, 

A sick enchantress scans the dark to curse, 

Beside a caldron vext with harlots’ blood, 

The stars of that red Sign which spells her doom. 

Then Fancy cleaves the palmy skies adverse 
To sunset barriers. By the Ganges’ flood, 

She sees, in her dim temple, Siva loom 
And, visioned with a monstrous ruby, glare 
On distant twilight where the burning-ghaut 
Is lit with glowering pyres that seem the eyes 
Of her abhorrent dragon-worms that bear 
The pestilence, by Death in darkness wrought. 
So Fancy’s wings forsake the Asian skies. 

And now her heart is curious of halls 
In which dead Merlin’s prowling ape has spilt 
A vial squat whose scarlet venom crawls 
To ciphers bright and terrible, that tell 
The sins of demons and the encharneled guilt 
That breathes a phantom at whose cry the owl. 
Malignly mute above the midnight well, 

Is dolorous, and Hecate lifts her cowl 


190 


To mutter swift a minatory rune; 

And, ere the tomb-thrown echoings have ceased. 
The blue-eyed vampire, sated at her feast. 

Smiles bloodily against the leprous moon. 

But evening now is come, and Fancy folds 
Her splendid plumes, nor any longer holds 
Adventurous quest o’er stained lands and seas— 
Fled to a star above the sunset lees, 

O’er onyx waters stilled by gorgeous oils 

That toward the twilight reach emblazoned coils. 

And I, albeit Merlin-sage has said, 

“A vyper lurketh in ye wine-cuppe redde,” 

Gaze pensively upon the way she went. 

Drink at her font, and smile as one content. 


191 


THE TESTIMONY OF THE SUNS 


To Whom the unceasing suns belong. 
And cause is one with consequence ,— 
To Whose divine inclusive sense 
The moan is blended with the song. 

—Ambrose Bierce. 


I 

The heavens darken in the North. . . . 
The light deserts the quiet sky. . . . 
From their far gates how silently 
The stars of evening tremble forth! 

Time, to thy sight what peace they share 
On Night’s inviolable breast! 

Remote in solitudes of rest. 

Afar from human change or care. 

Eternity, unto thine eyes. 

In war’s unrest their legions surge. 
Foam of the cosmic tides that urge 
The battle of contending skies, 


192 


The war whose waves of onslaught, met 
Where night’s abysses storm afar. 
Break on the high, tremendous bar 
Athwart that central ocean set— 

From seas whose cyclic ebb and sweep, 
Unseen to Life’s oblivious hours, 

Are ostent of the changeless Pow’rs 
That hold dominion of the Deep. 

O armies of eternal night, 

How flame your guidons on the dark! 
Silent we turn from Time to hark 
What final Orders sway your might. 

Cold from colossal ramparts gleam. 

At their insuperable posts, 

The seven princes of the hosts 
Who guard the holy North supreme; 


193 


Who watch the phalanxes remote 
That, gathered in opposing skies. 

Far on the southern wastes arise. 
Marshalled by flaming Fomalhaut. 

Altair, what captains compass thee? 
What foes, Aldebaran, are thine? 

Red with what blood of wars divine 
Glows that immortal panoply? 

What music from Capella runs? 

How hold the Pleiades their bond? 
How storms the hidden war beyond 
Orion’s dreadful sword of suns? 

When, on what hostile firmament, 

Shall stars unnamed contend our gyre, 
’Mid councils of Bootes’ fire, 

Or night of Vega’s fury spent? 


194 


What tidings of the heavenly fray? 
These, as our sages nightward turn, 

To gaze within the gulfs where burn 
The helms of that sublime array: 

Splendors of elemental strife; 

Smit suns that startle back the gloom; 
New light whose tale of stellar doom 
Fares to uncomprehending life; 

Profounds of fire whose maelstroms froth 
To gathered armies of offense; 

Cohorts unweariable, immense, 

And bulks wherewith the Dark is wroth; 

Reserves and urgencies of light 
That flame upon the battle’s path, 

And banding suns that brave the wrath 
Of systems leagued athwart the night; 


195 


Menace of silent ranks that sweep 
Unto irrevocable wars, 

And onset of titanic cars 
In Armageddons of the Deep! 

Dream we their enginery was not, 

Far in the dim, eternal past? 

Dream we eternity at last 
Will find their thunders unbegot? 

How haste the unresting feet of Change, 
On life’s stupendous orbit set! 

She walks a way her blood has wet. 

Yet thinks her path untrodden, strange. 

By night’s immeasurable dome 

She dreams her hopes in surety held— 
Lo! from insurgent deeps impelled 
The fleeting systems lapse like foam. 


196 


Unshared she thinks the kindred skies; 

But runic gulf and star proclaim 
(Archival gloom, prophetic flame) 

The immutable infinities: 

Vague on the night the mist we mark 
That tells where met the random suns: 

In changeless molds of law it runs 
To orbs that roam anew the dark, 

And unto which the worlds are born. 

Where Life awakes to know again 
The light of stars, caress of rain. 

And winds of the forgotten morn. 

Lift up, ye everlasting gates 

Whence fare her feet to wars unknown, 
To heights august of Reason’s throne, 
And heritage of ampler Fates! 


197 


When she, the mindless clay no more 
In Lust’s or Fear’s potential hands, 
Shall range her uncontested lands 

Or sister world’s befriending shore. 

Till lapse her beatific years 
In emperies of art untold. 

The music of her age of gold. 

Requiting for unnumbered tears; 

Till she behold—the visual boon 
Surviving elemental risk— 

The nearing sun’s enormous disc. 

Blood-red at dusk of sullen noon; 

Till her appointed course be run; 

Till on the darkness faint her breath. 
Flown to the silent void, and Death 

Sit crowned upon the ashen sun. 


198 


Till sun and sun be met at last. 

In warfare that annuls the night, 
When sea and mountain start to light. 
Pyres of the sacrificial past, 

Dim veils of fire, O world! that were 
The stubborn bastions of thy frame, 
And reaches of abysmal flame 
Wherein thy spectral oceans stir— 

A mist upon the vassal skies 
Gyrant to Betelgeuse—a flare 
Upon the midnights round Altair— 

A portent to barbaric eyes. 

O dread and strong Eternity! 

Prickt in an instant of thy clime, 

The bubble of Antares’ time 

Is one with thine unchanging sea. 


199 


Ever the star, unstable, frames 
Her transitory throne of fire. 

But in thy sight how soon expire. 
How soon recur, the inviolate flames!— 

Throbs of the fitful sun that are 
Unto thine amplitude of sight, 

Even as the quick unrest of light 
That stirs, to mortal sense, the star. 


What silence rules the ghostly hours 
That guard the close of human sleep! 
Aldebaran crowns the western deep; 
Belted with suns Orion tow’rs. 

And greaved with light of worlds destroyed. 
And girt with firmamental gloom. 

Abides his far, portended doom 
And menace of the warring void. 


200 



Shall night allay his high unrest? 

Shall Time his destinies aver. 

Or darkened vastitude deter 
His feet from their immortal quest? 

Shall augury his goal impart. 

Or mind his hidden steps retrace 
To mausolean pits of space 
Where throbs the Hydra’s crimson heart? 

Ephemeral, may Life declare 

What quarry from the Lion runs. 

And sway the inexorable suns 
Where gape the abysses of his lair? 

O Night, what legions serve thy wars! 

Lo! thy terrific battle-line— 

The rayless bulk, the blazing Sign, 

The leagued infinity of stars! 


201 


Remote they burn whose dread array 
Glows from the dark a dust of fire; 
Unheard the storm of Rigel’s ire, 

A grain of light Arcturus’ day. 

Unheard their antiphon of death 
Who gleam Capella’s cosmic foes; 

Unseen the war whose causal throes 
Perturb gigantic Algol’s breath— 

Whom from afar we mete and name. 

Ere Light and Life their doom fulfill, 
Spawn of the Power whose aeons still 
The suns of Taurus armed with flame. 

What sound shall pass the gulfs where groan 
Their sullen axles on the night? 

What thunder from the strands of light 
Whence Vega glares on worlds unknown? 


202 


O Deep whose very silence stuns! 

Where Light is powerless to illume. 

Lost in immensities of gloom 
That dwarf to motes the flaring suns. 

O Night where Time and Sorrow cease! 
Eternal magnitude of dark 
Wherein Aldebaran drifts a spark. 

And Sirius is hushed to peace! 

O Tides that foam on strands untrod, 

From seas in everlasting prime, 

To light where Life looks forth on Time, 
And Pain, unanswered, questions God! 

What Power, with inclusive sweep 
And rigor of compelling bars, 

Shall curb the furies of the stars. 

And still the troubling of that Deep? 


203 


What will shall calm that wrathful sky? 
Crave ye tranquillities of light. 

Who stand the sons of war and night? 

Behold! the Abyss has given reply. 

Wards of Whose realm shall ye avail 
To loose the tentacles of force 
That drag Arcturus from his course. 

And rend the weight of Procyon’s mail? 

Shall yet your feet essay, unharmed, 

The glare of cosmic leaguers met 
Round stellar strongholds gulfward set. 

With night and fire supremely armed? 

Shall sun or cycle yet confirm 

Your lordship to the unceded Vast, 

Or human period outlast 

The vigil of Capella’s term? 


204 


Deem ye the Eternal Mind will change 
The throned infinity of law 
That never aeon altered saw 
In all the Past’s eternal range? 

Child of unrest, but fain for peace. 

Life dreams, in her expectant dark, 

Of final things, and waits to hark 
Conclusive trumpets crying cease. 

She lifts an alien voice to call 
To near Denebola: “O sun! 

A little, and thy day is done, 

A little, and the Night is all.” 

A little, and his rays, far-flown, 

Gleam in the dews upon her grave, 
The storied pomps her epochs gave 
A dust within her deserts lone. 


205 


Yea! so shall Life on worlds afar 
Muse idly of a cosmic tomb, 

Where now past Alioth the gloom 
Stirs not with her awaited star. 

Her fate, how stranger than we deem! 
Tho Faith behold with trusting eyes 
A vision on transmuted skies— 

The splendors of the human dream; 

To live, tho Pain and Sorrow cease; 

To reach the high Eternal Heart; 

To know Infinity, nor part; 

To find the far Ideal, Peace— 

The life of each perfected world 
August archangels chanting praise, 
Deep-ranked in everlasting ways. 
With wings of grief and exile furled. 


206 


O dream not all the worlds fulfill! 

Unblest, unbidden, save of hope. 

Not for finality the scope 
And strength of that unaltered Will. 

The eternal Night has writ in stars 
Denial of the ends ye name; 

Ye stand rebuked by suns who claim 
The consummation of her wars. 

Constrained to what abysmal pole 

Shall severed armies close their flanks 
To stand with deviated ranks, 

Subserving to a final goal? 

Shall Godhead dream a transient thing? 
Strives He for that which now He lacks? 
Shall Law’s dominion melt as wax 
At touch of Hope’s irradiant wing? 


207 


Are these the towers His hands have wrought? 
Dreams He the dream of end and plan 
Dear to the finity of man, 

And shall mutation rule His thought? 

What powers throng the pregnant gloom! 
Unseen, the ministers of Law 
Reach from eternity to draw 
The suns to predetermined doom. 

On Law ye serve with kindred might. 

Atom and world that hold her ways; 

The firefly’s mote, the comet’s blaze. 

Are equal in her perfect sight. 

Her bonds compel the Vast where boils 
Intensest Spica’s sea of fire; 

Her lips decree the hidden gyre 
Of bulks that strain in Algol’s toils. 


208 


Subject to Law’s resistless word, 

Thy hands, O Force! resolve the star. 
And toil, at Alphard’s battle-car, 

His flaming panoply to gird. 

Charged, the immeasured gulfs transmit 
Her mandate to the fonts of life. 
Inciting to the governed strife 
Whereby the lethal voids are lit. 

With augment of imperious tides 
On vague, illimitable coasts, 

And battle-haze of merging hosts 
To which the flare of Vega rides. 

“But nay!” ye cry, “we trust her hands 
Induce an unconjectured morn, 

To whose divine fulfillment born. 

Her strength irrevocable stands.” 


209 


O lights by which, far-taught, we trace 
The path of Life from death to death! 

O fanes of her recurrent breath, 

And strength of Night’s annulling mace!— 

Profounds whose silences proclaim 
What realms of mystery and awe! 

Colossal Wraths extolling Law 
From unsubverted thrones of flame!— 

Suns of the Lyre whose thunders rise 

From chords the eternal Hands have smit! 
Stars of the Sword a moment lit 
Ere Life re-name her altered skies!— 

Without beginning, aim or end; 

Supreme, incessant, unbegot; 

The systems change, but goal is not. 

Where the Infinities attend. 


210 


Deem ye their armaments confess 
A source of mutable desire? 

Think ye He mailed His thought in fire 
And called from night and nothingness 

And armed for Time their high array? 
Dream ye Infinity was bent 
Upon a whim, a drama spent 
Within an instant of His day? 

Think ye He broke His dream indeed, 

And rent His deep with fearful Pow’rs, 
That Man inherit fadeless bow’rs? 
Desiring, He would know a need! 

Nay! stable His Infinity, 

Beyond mutation or desire. 

The visions pass. The worlds expire, 
Unfathomed still their mystery. 


211 


So has He dreamt. So stands His night 
Wherein the suns abiding range. 

Dust of the dynasties of Change, 

And altars of eternal light. 

II 

My sleep was like a summer sky 
That held the music of a lark: 

I waken to the voiceless dark 
And life’s more silent mystery. 

Night with her fleeting hours, how brief 
To watch beyond her vault sublime 
The gyrant systems meting Time, 

That holds the timelessness of grief! 

How pure the light their legions shed! 
How calm above the crumbling tomb 
Of race and epoch passed to gloom 
No ray can pierce nor mortal tread! 


212 


What gulfs define the cosmic storm! 

The torrent of Capella’s light 
A needle on the nerves of sight. 

Till Force annul the bonds of form; 

Till Alcor vanish from the void 

Wherein the Dragon dares the waste. 
Wherein the spawn of Alioth haste 
To ghostly bastions long destroyed. 

O nearer dark whence Man descries 
Abyssal lamps that flare and sink! 
Profounds where stellar glories shrink. 
Or Betelgeuse relumined flies! 

In gloom as dense can Spica grope 
As this that bars the human will? 
Desires as vast her children fill. 

Or kindred mystery and hope? 


213 


Lo! peaceless, ere the veiling day 
Expand where now Arcturus shines, 

I cry to night’s ascendant Signs 
The timeless questions of the clay: 

Will Life, the bourne eternal crossed. 

Attain the secret of her hours? 

Will Sorrow find atoning Pow’rs, 

And Love fare heavenward to her lost? 

I lift entreating eyes to see 

Gulf beyond gulf till sight relent. 

Sun beyond sun till Time repent 
Its question of Infinity. 

Shall voice or vision cross the night 

From glooms where grope the hands of Force, 
On law’s inexorable course, 

To being’s transitory light? 


214 


Shall Sirius resolve our fears? 

Shall Vega’s Lord command the Lyre 
To scatter from her chords of fire 
A music on the mortal years? 

Shall Procyon with flaming tongue 

Declare the doom his strength awaits. 

Or Rigel’s light reveal the Fates 
Whereto his shadowed worlds have sung? 

O silence of the changeless dark 

Whence Hope uplifts unwearied eyes! 

O patience of devouring skies 
That close on Algol’s dying spark! 

Enhooved with gloom, the Age stamps down 
The palace-flare of Babylon; 

To night the lords of Ur are gone; 

The Tyres of Time put by the crown. 


215 


To Death the sons of Life are thrust; 
From night to night the nations pace; 
Empire by empire, race by race. 

The generations pass to dust. 

Enter, O Life! their place of dread. 
And seek their silence to attain: 

Shall Mystery renounce her reign, 

Or darkness render thee thy dead? 

Where stirs the energy they knew? 
Joins it the forces undestroyed 
That urge the suns within the void. 
And shake the star in evening’s dew? 

Or sit they girt by laws unknown, 
Whereto the senses serve as bars— 
With fire of unrecorded stars 
That light a heaven not our own? 


216 


The Night inevitable waits 
Till fails the insufficient sun. 

And darkness ends the toil begun 
By Chaos and the morning Fates; 

And starward drifts the stricken world. 
Lone in unalterable gloom, 

Dead, with a universe for tomb. 

Dark, and to vaster darkness whirled. 

How dread thy reign, O Silence, there! 
A little, and the deeps are dumb— 

Lo! thine eternal feet are come 
Where trod the thunders of Altair. 

O ashen bulks that haunt the Vast, 
Beyond the ministry of Light! 

O strong intrenchment of the Night 
On charred Antares cold at last! 


217 


Eternity! thine awful hands 

Shall blot the Lion from our skies, 

And build thy dark for future eyes 
Where now illumed Orion stands. 

Forever, infinite of range. 

Unceasing whirls the cosmic storm. 

In changeless gulfs where Force and Form 
Renew the mystery of Change. 

A fleeting moment, to thy sight, 

Lamp of thine altar Alphard burns; 
Aldebaran to dusk returns. 

And Betelgeuse is stone and night. . . . 

What solitudes of gloom unknown 
Abide, O Sun! thy future ways. 

Ere Light at last a sceptre raise. 

Resuming her forsaken throne— 


218 


When Law’s compulsive angels sweep 
A sun unknown athwart thy path; 
When hands resistless wake the wrath 
That smites to flame the boiling Deep! 

And sprung from that recurrent storm, 
The youthful world exultant wheels. 
Where slow Eternity anneals 
The manacles of Time and Form; 

Where dim alchemic powers rebuild. 

To Law’s immutable designs, 

The primal, unapparent shrines 
With Being’s basic mystery filled— 

Fanes of the slowly fostered spark 

Whose fire shall light the groping clay 
To Reason’s sympathetic day 
And refuge from the bestial dark. 


219 


Reborn to that selective strife 
And fury of ascendant wars, 

What tidings of the immortal shores? 

What covenant from Death, O Life? 

When, in what maze of spacial bound. 
Or cryptic glooms that wall the grave, 
Hast heard the secret which we crave 

From that inscrutable Profound? 

What surety that thy sons attain 
The litten council of thy Lords, 

And thunder of seraphic chords 

To music not of Time and Pain? 

What whisper from the world new-born 
Recalled thy footsteps to essay 
The far, inevitable way 

Lit sunward from thy mists of morn? 


220 


Nay! were Oblivion’s nightward springs 
So fair to thine enchanted eyes 
That now forgot the message lies 
From Mystery’s reluctant kings? 

Nay! are thy lips forever sealed, 

O thou that stoodst aloof with Death— 
Thou that with unrevealing breath 
Hast passed the swords his angels wield? 

She standeth mute. She cannot say 

(Ah! dumb to Love’s appealing Deep!) 
If Death be suzerain of Sleep, 

Or Lethe cross the road to Day. 

She cannot say if she in sooth 
Abide Infinity’s concern, 

Tho Time’s unanswered altars burn 
In question to the final Truth. 


221 


And yet from unaccording Fates 
We crave the secret of our tears. 

With trust in the betraying years. 

And clamor at relentless gates. 

And lost within the glooms that fill 

The Night’s primordial realm unknown. 
See Mystery on a vaster throne 
And Truth’s far face receding still. 

Shall yet the fearful answer fare 
To ancient life supremely wise. 

By seas that flash on alien eyes 
The riven sunlight of Altair? 

Athwart the gulfs of mote and mind. 

How vast, to Sense, the shadow falls! 
She gazes from her proven walls 
What deeps unfathomable to find! 


222 


Lo! wearied with the fruitless quest 
Their shores invisible to mark. 

We turn us to the outer Dark, 

And gleaming suns far-manifest. 

Night! of the dooms to which they sweep 
What rumor from the battle’s verge, 
Where sun and sun their chariots urge 
To leaguers of the hostile Deep? 

O Space and Time and stars at strife. 

How dreadful your infinity! 

Shrined by your termless trinity. 

How strange, how terrible, is life! 

How dark to Being’s baffled glance 
The pits of night and nothingness. 

Where manacled in Law’s duress 
The allegiant Pleiades advance! 


223 


Behold! her little sight is drawn 
By Hope’s untold, immortal ray; 

Debarred, she seeks atoning day; 

Beyond her gloom she dreams a dawn. 

Thy secret, O profound of stars! 

We, born of darkness, dare to seek, 
Adjuring Rigel that he speak 
His tidings of the eternal wars. 

Capella! past thy lonely light 

What Guardians rule the changeless void? 
What final Eden undestroyed 
Where seethe the caldrons of the night?— 

Where, on the path of suns far-fled, 
Aldebaran goes forth to doom; 

Where unto night’s tremendous tomb 
The worlds of Procyon are led. 


224 


Ere yet below our sky-line dip 

Thy sun-crowned spars to deeps unknown, 
Ere yet our pharos-light be flown, 

Declare thy cosmic port, O Ship! 

Arcturus! from the abysses vast 
That hush the Voices of thy strife. 

Hast heard a whisper unto Life, 

Assuring that she rest at last? 

Crave ye a truce, O suns supreme? 

What order shall ye deign to hark, 
Enormous shuttles of the dark! 

That weave the Everlasting Dream? 

Shall Sirius light the gulfs untrod 

That bar, O Life! thy claimant gaze? 
Shall Betelgeuse attend thy ways, 

Or Alphard guide thy feet to God? 


225 


Shall lone Antares whisper thee 
His attestation to thy hope, 

Or Alioth aid the souls that grope 
Within the Night’s infinity? 

Dost dream to hold the ghostly heights 
That soar beyond Mutation’s reign, 

Or sway the tides of Time and Pain, 
Lord of the war Arcturus lights? 

Wouldst set the Crown upon thy brow? 
Wouldst still the Scorpion’s heart of fire? 
Wouldst tread the arc of Rigel’s gyre. 

Or greet the God his worlds avow? 

Lo! claspt to His atoning breast 

In Whom are woe and wrong made just, 
Why this regression to the dust— 

This loss of certitude and rest? 


226 


What farce were that in which the soul 
Were summoned to celestial peace, 
And, ere her jubilation cease. 
Dismissed to her ancestral goal? 

To what emergency concealed, 

Abides the realm we seek to share. 
Which to all antecedent pray’r 
Eternity has not revealed? 

Has Vega’s night diviner shores? 

Shall Spica with surpassing ray 
Illume her worlds with vaster day 
Than that Denebola outpours? 

Dim are the laws the sages give, 

For Science sees in all her lands 
Illusive twilight, in her hands 
The judgments of the Relative. 


227 


Obscure the glooms that harbor Truth, 
And mute the lips from which we crave 
The guarded secret of the grave— 

So soon grown dumb to word and ruth! 

But ye, O suns! concede the boon 
To those whose baffled eyes aspire 
To search your syllables of fire. 

And read Orion’s telic rune— 

The boon to know that Life abides 
One with your immortality, 

One with your changing mystery. 

And foam of your eternal tides. 

Exalt, Infinity, thy might, 

Nor deem their decrement to mark. 
Spread thou their ashes on the dark: 

Behold! they leap again to light— 


228 


To light that summons Life to wake, 

And stirred from consummated sleep 
In matter's unconjectured deep, 

From mire to mind the pathway take. 

The pathway traced with blood and tears, 

And dust of all our fathers dead. 

Whose backward footsteps, wandering, red, 
Fade to the mist of nameless years. 

How oft, O Life, on worlds forgot, 

Hast thou, in thine unnumbered forms, 
Gone forth to Time’s transmuting storms, 
And fought till storm and stress were not! 

How oft hast striven, hoped, and died. 

And, dying, fared to gracious rest. 

The Night’s inevitable guest. 

In alien realms unverified! 


229 


How oft to Mystery and Time 

Returned, their ancient ways to hold, 
With lips that never yet have told 
The tidings of that distant clime— 

With little hands' that could not keep 
The mighty message of the Night, 

Nor bare to Day’s appealing sight 
The hidden annals of thy sleep. 

Dost deem the eternity to come 
The secret will disclose at last 
Whereunto an eternal past 
Held lips to revelation dumb? 

How vast the gulfs of man’s desire! 
Children of Change, we dream to share 
The battle-vigil of Altair, 

And watch great Fomalhaut expire; 


230 


To live, where darkened suns relume 
Their kingdoms in the abysmal haze— 
Where nearing Night attends the blaze 
Of high Antares red with doom; 

To hear within the deep of Law 

The Word that moves her causal tides; 

To know what Permanence abides 
Beyond the veil the senses draw. 

And such the hope that fills thy heart, 

O Life! on some allegiant world 
Round Procyon’s throne of thunder whirled, 
Or poised in Spica’s gulf apart. 

So dreamt thy sons on worlds destroyed. 
Whose dust allures our careless eyes. 

As, lit at last on alien skies, 

The meteor melts athwart the void. 


231 


So shall thy seed on worlds to be, 

At altars built to suns afar. 

Crave from the silence of the star 
^ Solution of thy mystery; 

And crave unanswered, till, denied 
By cosmic gloom and stellar glare, 

The brains are dust that bore the pray’r. 
And dust the yearning lips that cried. 


THE END 





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